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THE BURNING OF PROTESTANTS IN THE STREETS OF PARIS. P. 7. 



MARTYRS OF FRANCE; 



THE WITNESS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH 
OF FRANCE, 

FROM THE REIGN OF FRANCIS FIRST 

TO THE 

gleboaiion of % ®bict of ^tattles. 



BY 

KEY. JOHN W. HEARS. 




PHILADELPHIA: 
PRESBYTERIAN PUBLICATION COMMITTEE, 

1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



NEW YORK: A. D. F. RANDOLPH, 683 BROADWAY. 



/jt-7 






♦ ^ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 

WM. L. HILDEBURN, Treasurer, 

in trust for the 

PRESBYTERIAN PUBLICATION COMMITTEE, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON ft CO. 
PHILADELPHIA. 



2- i> frjj> 



PREFACE. 



In these calmer and easier days of the 
history of the Church, when the dividing 
lines which separate her from the world 
are almost obliterated, — when the dangers 
which threaten her come from within rather 
than without, — when listlessness creeps in 
with a low estimate of her divine character 
and mission, and of the preciousness of her 
ordinances and doctrines, — and when free- 
dom of conscience is as common and as uncon- 
sidered a blessing as the light of heaven or 
the air we breathe, it is important to keep 
alive the memory of the heroic ages of the 
Church, and to cherish the sentiment of ad- 
miration and gratitude to those by whose 
faithfulness under trials of which we know 

3 



4 PBEFACE. 

| 
nothing, the quiet enjoyment of our religious 

privileges and of our rights of conscience 

was secured. 

It is the object of this little volume to con- 
tribute in a humble way to this end. The 
author would draw the attention of the 
young, especially, to a page in the history 
of martyrology full of stirring and tender 
interest. While the old authorities have not 
been overlooked in the composition of the 
volume, sources new to Sabbath-school litera- 
ture have been investigated, so that a degree 
of novelty will, it is hoped, be among its 
attractions to juvenile readers. 

May it help to cultivate deep and true 
devotion to the Master, and encourage a 
manly and vigorous style of piety that is not 
ashamed or afraid of the cross. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. page 

From the Commencement of the Persecution 
op the French Protestants, under Francis 
I., to the Crowning of Charles IX 7 

CHAPTER II. 
Persecutions during the Reign of Charles 
IX 24 

CHAPTER III. 
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew 43 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Edict of Nantes to the Revocation 60 

CHAPTER V. 
Story of Jean Migault 81 

CHAPTER VI. 
Splendid Achievements of the Refugees in 

Literature, Arts, and Arms 116 

I* 5 



MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PERSECUTION OF 
THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS, UNDER FRANCIS I., TO THE 
CROWNING OF CHARLES IX. 

On the 29th. of January, 1535, Francis L, 
the brilliant and famous king of France, 
ordered a solemn procession through the 
streets of Paris in honor of the Holy Sacra- 
ment. The image of a so-called saint — St. 
Genevieve, who, although long dead, was 
viewed as still taking great interest in the 
city and interceding for its prosperity in the 
heavenly world — was taken from its pedestal 
and borne on the shoulders of men around 
the city. The sacred bread and wine, too, 
were carried in the procession under a 

7 



8 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

splendid canopy. The king himself walked 
in the procession bare-headed, with his three 
children, all bearing wax tapers. Many- 
other persons of high standing in the nation, 
and ambassadors from foreign courts, fol- 
lowed the train. 

A peculiar entertainment had been pro- 
vided for the party. Six times they halted 
on their route; and for what purpose, do you 
imagine? That they might feast their eyes 
each time on a spectacle of the most barba- 
rous cruelty and most dreadful suffering. At 
each of these stations there was a hot fire 
burning, and near it a huge machine, or 
crane, having a beam attached to it, project- 
ing over the fire. From this beam a poor 
Protestant was suspended, and, by means of 
chains and pulleys, let down for a few mo- 
ments into the midst of the flames, then 
raised up again to take breath, and then 
let down again into the fire. This was re- 
peated until life became nearly extinct, when 
the suffering martyr was dropped finally 
into the blazing hearth and allowed to die. 

Horrible and distressing would such a 



UNDER FRANCIS I. 9 

sight be to the eyes of my reader who has 
shuddered at the story of the less fearful 
^hook-swinging" practised by the Hindoos. 
Yet the crowd which looked on not only 
testified their approval of this infinitely 
worse torture, but even rushed upon the 
poor victims to tear them to pieces. The 
soldiers actually had to interfere and drive 
them back. And the three sons of the king 
walking in the procession, some of them 
mere children, beheld the shocking sight. 
Twelve years afterwards, the king died, and 
one of these sons became king in his place. 
He remembered the cruel lesson taught him 
by his father on this and similar occasions, 
and was not slow to practise them upon the 
unoffending Protestants, so that the num- 
ber of the martyrs of his reign is counted 
by tens of thousands. 

But to return to the victims sacrificed 
during the procession : what, you will ask, 
was their crime? Their names and some- 
thing of their history have been handed 
down to us, which we are quite sure you 
will be interested to read. But in their 



10 MAKTYKS OF FRANCE. 

lives you will find no cause for death by- 
torture except that cause which led holy men 
in the days of the apostles to martyrdom, 
— the love of God and the maintenance of 
his truth. 

One of the six was Bartholomew Milo, a 
shoemaker of Paris, who was a helpless 
cripple, except that he could use his tongue 
and arms. These members he exercised 
with unusual skill ; but his witty tongue he 
employed in railing at religion. The severe 
sickness which had made him a cripple was 
the means of his spiritual recovery. A 
pious man, being mocked by him as he 
passed the shop, rewarded him in a truly 
Christian manner by giving him a New Tes- 
tament. He ceased to mock. The book 
took such a hold upon him that he read in 
it incessantly by night and day. During 
his sickness, which lasted six years, he con- 
tinued to grow as a Christian. He was so 
helpless that it took four persons to move 
him. But he was not idle: he taught his 
children to write, and worked at such trades 
as he could, giving his earnings to poor 



UNDER, FRANCIS I. 11 

Protestants. Milo played beautifully on mu- 
sical instruments, and his friends who came 
to hear him, knowing his past life and cha- 
racter, could not sufficiently wonder at his 
conversion. His chamber was a school in 
which the gospel was made known, and out 
of which the honor and majesty of the Lord 
shone brightly forth. 

The rage of the persecutors fell upon 
the poor cripple. " Get up, Milo/' cried the 
officer, in his blind fury, as he approached 
and found him motionless. "Ah, sir," re- 
plied the cripple, calmly, "it would require 
the power of a greater Master than you are 
to make me stand upright." He was imme- 
diately dragged away and condemned to be 
burned by "slow fire." His fellow-prisoners 
were unspeakably comforted and encouraged 
by his unshaken firmness. Being borne past 
his father's house, he behaved so nobly that 
even the enemies of truth were filled with 
admiration. Thus, did this servant and wit- 
ness of Jesus Christ show the same patience 
in death with which he had borne his 
tedious sufferings in life. 



12 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

Often the martyrs, while waiting until 
the preparations for their death were com- 
pleted, and even while being burned up in 
the flames, would speak to the multitude of 
spectators with great power and earnestness ; 
and men who went to make sport of their 
sufferings were frequently melted to pity, 
or even converted, by what they saw and 
heard. A poor bricklayer was led to the 
stake; and the persecutors were so fearful 
that even there his edifying discourse might 
work upon the minds of the spectators, that 
they bored his tongue through and fastened 
it with an iron pin to his cheek. In this 
condition he was burned. Indeed, it became 
a well-established practice among the in- 
human persecutors of this time to cut out 
the tongues of their victims, to prevent their 
making such confessions. But the calm and 
patient manner in which their sufferings 
were borne could not be hidden. Some- 
times the multitude were struck with won- 
der and with awe as they gazed ; and, with- 
out hearing any preacher, many were con- 



UNDER FRANCIS I. 13 

verted, and hastened to connect themselves 
with the churches of the afflicted people. 

You would not think it strange if King 
Francis should have suffered much distress 
of mind for permitting such cruel treatment 
of his most worthy subjects on account' of 
their religion, or if, on his death-bed, he ex- 
pressed himself as desirous of making some 
reparation. Such is said to have been the 
fact. But his son Henry II. , whom you 
have already seen taking part in the proces- 
sion of 1535, was not the man to carry out 
such wishes, especially after the training his 
father had given him. Not having any 
great decision of character, he allowed him- 
self to be controlled by the zealous followers 
of the Pope and of the Roman Church, who 
hated the purer religion taught by Luther 
and Calvin, the great Reformers, and who 
had resolved to put it down at any cost. 
And so zealous was the French Parliament 
in carrying out these bigoted views of the 
Romanists in seizing and condemning Pro- 
testants, that it got the name of "the Burn- 
ing Chamber/' 

2 



14 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

The king and his court had just entered 
Paris. Having heard much of the French 
Eeformer Calvin, — like Herod on hearing of 
the Saviour, or Agrippa after being told of 
Paul. — King Henry desired to have one of 
these persons brought before him and ques- 
tioned. 

Now, the Protestants were so skilful in 
answering questions about religion, that 
those who had them in charge took pains to 
select a poor tailor from the number, sup- 
posing that he could easily be perplexed, 
and that there was no fear of the king and 
court receiving a favorable impression of 
the. Reformed faith from him. However, 
the worthy tailor quite perplexed a bishop 
who was with the king at the time; and, 
instead of being amused, the king was 
astonished and the Eomanists mortified. It 
was only when the tailor grew so bold as to 
reprove the court for its immorality that the 
king got angry, and furiously commanded 
him to be burned alive in the street. The 
courtiers impatiently waited for the sight ; 
and on the 4th of July, 1549, after a pro- 



UNDER FRANCIS I. 15 

cession very much like that already de- 
scribed, the tailor and three other victims 
were burned. One of them was a servant 
of the king's own household; but so hor- 
rible were the cries of the poor man that- 
the cruel king lay awake all the night ; think- 
ing of them. The figure and voice of the 
dying servant haunted him for many days, 
and he would never agaifi witness a similar 
execution. This, however, by no means put 
an end to such scenes, for only five days 
afterwards many others were burned, — the 
fires being distributed all over the city of 
Paris, to strike terror into the minds of the 
entire population. Yet the result was just 
the opposite of what they wished. The 
people learned to pity the martyrs, and to 
hate as well as dread the persecutors, and 
so the Protestant cause never ceased to make 
headway. 

The year 1553 is marked in the history 
of France as the year of martyrdoms ; yet it 
is almost equally distinguished for the mul- 
tiplication of Protestant congregations. The 



16 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

Reformed Church of Paris was formed in 
1555. 

Although King Henry and the Pope were 
at open enmity, yet the king had no wish to 
be regarded as a heretic, and so he went on 
killing those of his subjects who ventured 
in their own way to differ from the Pope. 

But afterwards, the king ; being reconciled 
to the Pope, showed his zeal against the 
Protestants by seeking to introduce what is 
called the Inquisition into his unhappy 
country. This is a more secret, quiet, and 
terrible method of getting persons suspected 
of heresy into the power of the Pope and 
his agents, and of condemning them without 
the delay or trouble of an open trial. 
Taken suddenly, often at night in their beds, 
and hurried away to strong prisons and 
shut up in lonely cells, there was no need 
of cutting out their tongues, for only a just 
God who' is everywhere present could hear 
the cries wrung from them by the agony of 
torture or the words and sighs they uttered 
in their long imprisonment or at their secret 
execution. But King Henry was too fast 



UNDER FRANCIS I. 17 

for his people. Eager as they were for the 
burning of heretics, they would not consent 
to give over the right of judging and con- 
demning them to a secret and for the most 
part foreign tribunal. So the Inquisition 
was never established in France. 

Meanwhile the Reformed Church in Paris, 
seeing the danger of their cause, prayed 
without ceasing, and met together frequently. 
Qne night they met, to the number of three 
or four hundred, to celebrate the Lord's 
Supper. They were discovered by the 
priests, who collected a furious mob around 
the house just as they were about to dis- 
perse. The door was attacked, a cry was 
raised, the neighbors sprang from their 
beds, alarm spread through the city, igno- 
rant crowds ran to the spot, and when they 
found that it was an assembly of Protestants 
that had caused the uproar, they became 
furious, and demanded blood. Most of the 
congregation, at great peril, made their es- 
cape ; the remainder were carried to prison 
through the hootings and insults of the mob. 
Two elders and three others, including a 



18 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

lady, were burnt a month afterwards ; others 
were condemned; but the intercession of 
foreign courts softened the king, and impri- 
sonment was substituted for death in the 
case of those who still remained. Some es- 
caped from prison, some few were discharged ; 
but many died in miserable dungeons, re- 
fusing liberty at the sacrifice of religious 
principles. All this for the crime of cele- 
brating the Lord's Supper in the simple 
and peaceable manner of Protestants ! 

However, as the Protestant religion spread 
in France, and even judges became converts, 
it began to be difficult always to procure the 
condemnation of persons suspected of it. 
In vain did the king seek to remedy this 
defect by establishing a new bench of judges. 
That, too, was found to contain men too 
much inclined to favor the Eeformed, and 
Henry, in wrath, ordered four of the judges 
to be thrown into the Bastille. 

This Bastille was an immense and strong 
prison in Paris, with many dark dungeons, 
which stood until near the close of the last 
century, when it was destroyed by a mob. 



UNDER FRANCIS I. 19 

Before this frowning prison King Henry, 
never thinking of the unhappy beings with- 
in, but bent wholly on his own pleasure, 
held a gay party with many of the great 
people of his kingdom. In the midst of the 
sport, which, in those days, was often very 
violent and dangerous, the king fell, mor- 
tally wounded. He lingered a few days, 
and died without even speaking a word. 
Was it not a little strange that in laying out 
his body the piece of rich embroidered cloth 
thrown over it happened to have woven into 
it the picture of Saul the persecutor struck 
to the ground by a great light, in the midst 
of his furious journey to Damascus, together 
with the very words of Christ: "Saul, 
Saul, why persecutest thou me V It was 
unintentional ; and another piece of cloth 
was substituted for it, — but not until the 
rumor of it had taken wing, so that all 
France resounded with it. 

It was one of the first acts of the new 
king, Francis II., a boy of but fifteen, to 
consent to the death of one of these im- 
prisoned judges, Du Bourg by name, who 



20 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

died like a hero, refusing deliverance in any 
shape that his conscience could not approve. 
The martyrdom of this noble sufferer seemed 
like the opening of the flood-gates of perse- 
cution. Houses were broken open, little 
children were included in the sacrifices, and 
the helpless babes of Protestant mothers, 
who had been murdered or driven away, 
were suffered to weep away their lives on 
the stony pavements by men with hearts 
even more stony. 

Images were set up in the streets, and 
whoever would not do them reverence was 
in danger of violence and murder from the 
crowd. If a man had a grudge against his 
neighbor, he pointed at him, and cried, 
" Lutheran!" to set the rabble upon him. 
The horrid swing moved incessantly, with 
half-roasted bodies hanging from it in the 
flames. The priests from their pulpits urged 
their people onward in the bloody work. 
The land groaned under an intolerable burden. 
Tumults and insurrections followed. The 
attempt was made by the Reformed party, 
who were numerous and powerful, to seize 



UNDER FRANCIS I. 21 

upon the youthful monarch and rescue him 
from the hands of his Romanist friends and 
advisers and put him in charge of the Re- 
formed. The plot did not succeed, and two 
of the conspirators, the Princes of Navarre 
and Cond6, both uncles of the king, were 
seized and thrown into prison. Even the 
day for the execution of the Prince of Conde 
was fixed ; but Providence seemed to inter- 
pose once more for the punishment of his 
enemies and the liberation of his friends. 
King Francis died when only seventeen 
years old. His wicked and bloody counsel- 
lors fled in great terror. No one mourned 
him but his widow, whom our readers may 
know as Mary Queen of Scots. Only two 
lords and but one blind bishop appeared at 
his grave. The two uncles were liberated, 
and the new king, Charles IX., brother 
to Francis, succeeded to the throne at the 
age of ten years. 

About this time the term Huguenot came 
into use in France as descriptive of those 
who held the Reformed faith. It is not cer- 
tainly known what is meant by the word, or 



22 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

why it was chosen to describe the Reformed. 
According to some, it means comrades bound 
by an oath, — : sworn associates. Others say 
it was intended as a term of reproach given 
to the Calvinists from their meeting so much 
at night, — as if we should say hobgoblins. 
Whatever it means, the French Protestants 
of that day were called, and are still called, 
Huguenots. The enemies of the truth in 
Antioch, you remember, called the disciples 
" Christians," thinking they had fastened a 
reproach upon them. But how sadly were 
they mistaken ! for millions upon millions of 
disciples in all ages of the world have felt it 
the greatest of all honors to bear that name. 
So the word Huguenot has become an honor- 
able and distinguished name, and there are 
hundreds of thousands now, who feel far 
more satisfaction in being able to trace back 
their family to a Huguenot ancestor, than 
they would in finding themselves connected 
with one of the proud Popish nobles or 
kings who despised, persecuted, and vilified 
these people. A good name is rather to be 



UNDER FEANCIS I. 23 

chosen than great riches ; but if we lose the 
good opinion of others in simply doing right, 
God will take care of our reputation, and 
sooner or later set it right. History teaches 
us few truths more clearly than this. 



24 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 



CHAPTER II. 

\ 
PERSECUTIONS DURING THE REIGN OF CHARLES IX. 

Soon after the crowning of the new king 
Charles IX., it was felt that the Eeformed 
party were so powerful that more peaceable 
measures must be pursued with them. The 
Bishop of Valence, who leaned strongly to 
the new doctrine, proposed a conference with 
the principal clergymen among the Reformed. 
The Cardinal of Lorraine, a Romish digni- 
tary, approved of the proposal, as he was very 
confident that the heretics could be no match 
for his own eloquence and argumentative 
power. He, however, would not consent that 
the name Council should be applied to the 
assembly, for by that name the Romish as- 
semblies were called. It was too good a 
name for a meeting in which Protestants 
were to have a share. It was finally agreed 



UNDER CHARLES IX. 25 

that a meeting should be held under the 
title of a Colloquy (or a meeting for conver- 
sation) at a small town near Paris, called 
Poissy. Hence the meeting goes by the 
name of the Colloquy of Poissy, And we 
have no cause to be ashamed of it, by what- 
ever name called. Among the Reformed 
clergy at this colloquy, who numbered about 
twelve, were Theodore Beza, a man of great 
learning and eloquence, who wrote the life 
of Calvin, Peter Martyr, and others ; while 
on the other side was an imposing array of car- 
dinals and learned theologians. The royal 
family of France were also present. The 
Pope, who was not consulted, when he heard 
that the colloquy was to be held, was far 
from pleased, and despatched an officer to 
attend it, called a legate. Fortunately, how- 
ever, he did not arrive until several days 
ufter the opening. 

The colloquy was opened with a speech 
from the king; one of the cardinals fol- 
lowed; and then what do you suppose the 
Reformed clergymen did ? Up to this point 
the blessing of God upon the conference had 



26 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

not been asked, and, feeling that this was of 
the greatest possible importance, their first 
act was to go down upon their knees and 
make up this deficiency by earnest prayer. 
The proud assembly listened in silence to 
their devotions, no doubt with some feelings 
of rebuke that these despised heretics should 
show greater reverence to the Divine Being 
than they had done. Having recited the 
Lord's Prayer last, they arose, and Beza ad- 
dressed the king in defence of their faith. 

The elegance of a courtier and the dig- 
nity of a minister of Christ are united in 
the speech, as we have it from the pen of 
Beza himself. When Beza referred to the 
Romish doctrine of the Sacrament, the car- 
dinals endeavored to interrupt him and 
break up the conference ; but the king and 
court remained in their places, and the elo- 
quent and fearless champion of the truth 
was heard to the last. This took place on 
the 9th of September, 1561. One week 
afterwards the cardinal Lorraine delivered a 
long harangue, in which his memory was 
aided by a learned person standing behind 



UHDEE CHARLES IX. 27 

and prompting him whenever it was neces- 
sary. So little confidence did he now feel 
in his powers of reasoning and persuasion 
that when Beza asked leave to reply on the 
spot, he put him off to another day. 

As the Pope's legate had now arrived, the 
public conferences ceased ; it was thought 
too much to allow the Reformed to be heard 
even in a colloquy. 

The following January an act was passed, 
called the " Edict of January," being the 
first law for religious toleration passed in 
France. Yet, in spite of this law, the 
Romish priests and bishops continued their 
persecutions of the people of God. 

There was a Reformed congregation in a 
town called Vassy, which, though established 
but a few months, numbered three thousand 
persons. They worshipped in a barn which 
had been fitted up as a church. On the 
morning of Sunday, the 1st of March, 1562, 
a company of soldiers, under the command 
of the Duke of Guise, surrounded the build- 
ing while the congregation were at worship. 
Several entered the house, and interrupted 



28 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

the worship with profane exclamations, shout- 
ing out that they all deserved to be killed. 
What the disturbed and outraged worship- 
pers did or said in reply is not, and perhaps 
now cannot be, known. Certain it is they 
were peaceable and unarmed, while their 
disturbers were soldiers, furnished with in- 
struments of death, and they speedily em- 
ployed them on the innocent people. The 
duke, who was at the door, himself received 
a slight wound on the face ; and, whether he 
had intended to encourage the massacre 
previously or not, he now rushed in, sword 
in hand, thirsting for blood. Some of the 
congregation broke through the roof, some 
jumped out of the windows. The pastor 
was wounded both with a bullet and a stroke 
of the sword, and, thinking his end had 
come, knelt down, and, with a loud, clear 
voice, heard above the din of slaughter, 
commended his soul to God in the words of 
the Psalm, "Into thy hand I commit my 
spirit : thou hast redeemed me, Lord God 
of truth !" The duke in a rage commanded 
him to be seized and hung upon a gallows as 



UNDER CHARLES IX. 29 

soon as one could be prepared. Yet divine 
Providence interposed to save his life, so that 
he even outlived the murderous duke. 

In this massacre sixty were killed, and 
more than two hundred carried away- 
wounded, many of whom died of their 
wounds. The duke himself received the 
fitting title of the butcher of Vassy. 

Similar deeds of blood and of horror were 
committed by the populace in all directions. 
At Tours three hundred persons were shut 
up in a church three days, and then taken 
to the b#nk of the river, and butchered, one 
by one, except the children, who were sold. 
A little infant, just bom, was flung with its 
mother into the stream, and it was said that, 
as the babe floated down the stream, it lifted 
its arm, as if to call upon heaven for ven- 
geance on the atrocious and fiend-like mur- 
derers. 

The Reformed now prepared for open re- 
sistance. "It is true, sire/' said Beza to the 
king, "that it becomes the Church of God, 
for which I am now speaking, to suffer 
blows, and not to give them ; but may it 
3* 



30 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

please you to remember that this anvil has 
worn out many hammers." 

In the eight years following there were 
no less than three civil wars with intervals 
of so-called peace. But in truth the peace 
meant nothing more on the side of the Pap- 
ists than a better chance for them to frame 
their dark plots, and to carry on their bloody 
persecutions against the unarmed people. 
It was this unfaithfulness to their solemn 
promises, and this unyielding determination 
to work their utter destruction, that roused 
the Huguenots and brought them so many 
times to the field of battle. You may judge 
of the spirit of these persecutors when I 
tell you that the Parliament at Toulouse were 
so enraged against the second peace made be- 
tween the two parties, and concluded at Paris 
in 1567, that they seized the poor messen- 
ger who brought the news of it, and, in their 
blind fury, put him to death. At one time 
during these wars the entire Protestant 
population were proscribed, — that is, they 
were put in the same position as condemned 



UNDER CHARLES IX. 31 

criminals whom it would be lawful for any 
one to kill without form of trial. 

At another time it was resolved to arrest 
all the leading Huguenots at the same mo- 
ment. The Prince of Conde and the Admiral 
Coligny ; with their families, including chil- 
dren in their cradles, had to fly from their 
homes. They were obliged to cross the river 
Loire, while all the bridges were guarded by 
Eomish soldiers, waiting to seize them. But 
the water was low, and they knew a shallow 
place which the soldiers had not noticed. 
Conde carried his little babe in his arms, 
and all the party waded across in safety. 

Scarcely had they crossed when a party of 
soldiers on horses came in sight, intending 
to follow them and make them prisoners. 
But, with a deliverance almost like that of 
the children of Israel when pursued by 
Pharaoh, the Lord saved them from their 
enemies. Before the horses could get down 
to the ford, the waters began to swell, and 
soon came boiling down at such a rate that 
where the Protestants had waded in safety 
men on horseback did not venture in. Even 



32 MARTYRS OF FEANCE. 

their enemies have recorded this wonderful 
and sudden interposition of God's providence 
in their behalf. 

The third war was the fiercest of all. 
England and Germany sent soldiers to help 
the Protestants, while Spain and the Pope 
assisted King Charles and his Popish sub- 
jects. A dreadful battle was fought at 
Jarnac, and the Protestants were defeated. 
The Prince of Conde, the noble leader of 
the Protestants, just as he was preparing 
for a desperate cavalry charge, received 
a kick from a wounded horse which frac- 
tured his leg so severely that the bone came 
through his boot. Notwithstanding this, he 
did not leave the field of battle. Even 
when the bulk of the army had fled, and 
his own horse had fallen under him, he con- 
tinued fighting on one knee. At length, 
faint, and full of anguish from his wound, 
he was taken prisoner, raised from the ground, 
and carried to the shade of a neighboring 
tree. A circle of officers gathered around, 
gazing respectfully upon the valorous cap- 
tain, once a terror to them, now powerless 



UNDER CHARLES IX. 33 

and apparently near to death. But another 
officer, with far different feelings, galloped 
up to the spot, and, before his hand could be 
stayed, drew his pistol and levelled it at the 
captive chieftain. Conde understood the 
savage glance, and, covering his face with 
his cloak, leaned forward to receive the bullet 
which in a moment had pierced his brain. 
The Duke of Anjou, not satisfied with this, 
had his body so disfigured that no one could 
have told who it was, and sent it on an ass 
to the house where Conde had lodged the 
night before. 

Prince Henry of Navarre, scarcely six- 
teen years old, and the younger Conde, took 
the command of the army, which by-and- 
by learned to exercise the patience and 
courage of older troops, and the king at 
last, in spite of his former victories over 
them, was glad to make peace with them a 
third time, at St. Germain, August 8, 1570. 

This treaty appears to have granted the 
Reformed many privileges, and in very clear 
and definite language. Many towns were 
mentioned where it would be lawful for them 



34 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

to meet for worship ; but from Paris and for 
several miles around, and from the court of 
the king, they were altogether shut out. 
They were allowed admission into the uni- 
versities, schools, hospitals, and almshouses, 
just as the Roman Catholics. All concerned 
in the war were pardoned. The Pope and his 
friends were astonished and offended at a 
treaty so liberal. They did not know what 
dreadful plans were hidden under this show 
of good will. Men too determined to be driven 
into submission were now to be deceived and 
their fears quieted by pretended acts of 
friendship, and then, when they had been 
lulled into a feeling of entire confidence and 
security, were to be destroyed at a stroke. 

For a time, persecutions ceased. In seve- 
ral instances where the impatient Papists 
broke through the restraints laid upon 
them and interrupted the Huguenots in 
their worship with violence and bloodshed, 
as at Pbouen, Dieppe, and Orange, the king 
ordered the disturbers to be seized and pun- 
ished. He even changed his mind in so im- 
portant a matter as his marriage, and took 



UNDER CHAELES IX. 35 

a German instead of a Spanish princess for 
his wife, saying that, since now a religious 
peace had been established in France, it was 
fitting that their new queen should come 
from a country where the people were al- 
lowed to choose and enjoy their own religion. 
He proposed to make war against the Catho- 
lic country of Spain and in defence of the 
Protestant people of the Netherlands, where 
Spain was sending her armies under that 
monster, the Duke of Alva. To the young 
Prince Henry of Navarre he gave his own 
sister, Margaret of Valois, in marriage, and 
promised wives both to the Prince of Conde 
and the Huguenot Admiral Coligny. He 
even went so far as to pretend to seek a 
marriage between his brother the Duke of 
Anjou, and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth 
of England. 

It was some time before the Huguenots 
could be tempted from their stronghold. 
But at length the plot succeeded. It seemed 
hardly possible that changes so great and 
acts so important should be nothing more 
than deceitful shows. The world perhaps 



36 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

has never seen a plan so extensive, so deeply 
laid, and so well carried out, as was this of 
Charles to entrap the Huguenots. Never 
was a deceit more monstrous or a lie more 
profound enacted than this of Charles IX. 
of France in the year 1572. The lie was' 
repeated in a thousand ways. It was car- 
ried so far that even Papists believed it to 
be true, and were mortified and enraged at 
the supposed change in the once zealous 
monarch. The Duke of Guise left the court. 
The Pope sent an ambassador to protest 
against Charles's conduct. The Protestant 
Queen of Navarre came to court to take 
part in her son's marriage, but suffered 
under very great depression of spirits, and 
died very suddenly jpefore the wedding came 
off. Admiral Coligny also came to Pari3, 
and was often engaged in consultation with 
the king about the expected war with 
Spain. 

Yet there were not a few among the 
Huguenots who mistrusted the king and his 
mother Catherine, and who expected the 
catastrophe that actually befell them. A 



UNDEB CHARLES IX. 37 

letter of warning was written to Admiral 
Coligny ; but lie paid it no attention ; yet 
just at this time a wicked man was actually 
hired to assassinate him. On the 20th of July, 
Henry, now, since the death of his mother, 
King of Navarre, rode into Paris in great 
state, attended by two thousand horsemen, 
to prepare for his marriage with Margaret, 
the king's sister. The people beheld them 
full of wrath, and with muttered curses; but 
King Charles's orders were strict, and no 
violence was offered. At court they were 
received with every mark of favor. The 
Pope's objections were set aside, and on the 
18th of August the marriage was celebrated 
with great magnificence in the cathedral of 
Notre Dame (Our Lady). We are told that 
in the midst of the splendid ceremonial 
Margaret, the bride, gave a very decided 
specimen of wilful temper by refusing to 
answer when asked if she took Henry for 
her husband. The question was repeated ; 
but she remained immovable as a statue. 
There stood a great company of lords and 
ladies, looking and wondering how it would 

4 



38 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

end ; — when the king went up to his sister, 
and, putting one hand on her breast and 
the other on the back of her head, bent her 
head forward. The bishop took this as an 
answer to his question, and went on with the 
ceremony. 

Great was the gayety that followed. Pro- 
testant and Eomanist mingled together in 
the most friendly manner. The company 
went from one palace to another, feasting in 
the day and dancing at night, going the 
rounds of all known pleasures and amuse- 
ments. 

But the crafty Catherine with her son 
Charles forgot not for a moment their dark 
and savage designs. On Wednesday, the 
20th of August, we are told that Charles 
approached Coligny, and addressed him in 
such lying words as these : — "You know, my 
father, that I have promised you none of 
the Guises should show you any rudeness at 
court. They have come to Paris with a 
very large body of armed men, for the sake, 
as they say, of being present at the wedding. 
Exceedingly sorry should I be if they should 



UNDER CHARLES IX. 39 

contrive to injure you. Any harm done to 
you I should consider as done to myself. As 
it just occurs to me, if you think well of 
it, I will have a regiment of soldiers brought 
into the city and put under the command 
of men whom we can trust, that, if any thing 
of the sort should be attempted, it may be 
put down at once," Coligny suspected 
nothing, but took the offer as another proof 
of the king's kindness, and readily agreed 
to have the soldiers come into the city, and 
to have just such officers over them as the 
king desired. How much like an innocent, 
unsuspecting lamb, licking the hand of the 
butcher as it is about to be raised for the 
fatal blow ! For these soldiers were brought 
in for the very purpose of making any re- 
sistance on the part of the Huguenots im- 
possible. 

On Thursday, the 21st, we read of three 
Huguenot officers leaving Paris, in anticipa- 
tion of the coming massacre. But Coligny 
and the most of them remained. The next 
day the murderer hired to kill Coligny fired 
upon him from a grated window as he was 



40 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

leisurely walking by. The ball struck his. 
arm and his fingers, and shattered them so 
that two fingers had to be taken off; but he 
escaped further injury. Charles and his 
mother pretended to be greatly enraged at 
this murderous attempt, and threatened the 
most terrible vengeance against the assassin. 
The king called in person upon the wounded 
admiral, and played over the same part in his 
chamber. Coligny heard him with calm- 
ness, and, still unwilling to doubt his sin- 
cerity, spoke very earnestly and plainly 
of his ministers and counsellors, warned him 
of their treachery, and pointed out the ruin 
they were bringing upon France. 

The principal men among the Huguenots 
spent most of the night in discussing what 
was best to be done. Most of them were con- 
vinced that mischief was intended by the 
king, and were anxious to leave Paris imme- 
diately. But young Henry of Navarre and 
Cond6 were of the contrary opinion, and al- 
lowed themselves to be persuaded of the 
entire sincerity of the king, and so refused to 



UNDER CHARLES IX. 41 

take their last chance of escape from the 
net so cunningly laid to entrap them. 

It seems strange that they were suffered 
to be so grossly deceived, and that of their 
own free will, and in spite of many warnings, 
these Huguenots should be left to linger on, 
day after day, until the plans of their de- 
ceivers w r ere complete and their cruel ene- 
mies could slaughter them at their leisure. 
But so it was. The fatal hour drew near. 
Letters were sent to the governors of the 
provinces. Five hundred Huguenots had 
gone in a body to the king, and had de- 
manded justice against the Duke of Guise 
for his connection with the attempted assas- 
sination of Coligny, threatening to avenge 
it themselves if no other means could be 
found. This threat was made an excuse for 
rousing the population, and for preparing in 
every one of the sixteen divisions of Paris 
for an attack on the Reformed. 

Coligny, perceiving the disturbance, had 
sent to the king for a guard of soldiers. In 
return, fifty archers, w r ith an open enemy of 
the admiral at their head, were posted in 

4* 



42 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

two shops directly opposite his residence, 
while, to quiet his suspicions, the Papists 
living in the neighborhood were required 
to leave their houses and make room for 
the admiral's friends the Huguenots. This 
was the last of the innumerable acts of 
deceit which had been practised upon 
them; and it seemed quite as successful 
as the rest. On the eve of the terrible 
massacre, Coligny and his friends lay down 
tranquilly to their last sleep upon earth. 
This was Saturday night, the 23d of August. 



MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 43 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 

All things were now ready. Lines of 
soldiers had been distributed through the 
streets. The captains of the sixteen divisions 
of the city, and the soldiers, were fully 
informed of the purpose of the king that 
night utterly to destroy those disturbers of 
the peace of his kingdom, the Huguenots. 
"The brute is in the net/' said the Duke of 
Guise to the soldiers; "and you must take 
care that he does not escape." Torches were 
prepared to be placed in the windows of the 
Papists' houses, and it was agreed that they 
should wear a white cross on their caps and 
a white scarf on the arm, to show who they 
were in the confusion. A little before day- 
break the bell of the Palace of Justice would 
be tolled as a signal, and the work of death 



44 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

would begin. But, hardened as was the 
king, he could with difficulty bring himself 
to the consummation of so horrid a plot. 
Conscience, though long crushed and feeble, 
was awakening in his bosom, and the young 
sovereign hesitated. His mother, Catherine 
de Medicis, in whom the milk of human 
kindness seemed to have been turned en- 
tirely into gall, who felt no misgivings and 
never faltered in her direful purpose, ex- 
pecting her son's courage to fail, paid him a 
visit soon after midnight on Sunday, and 
found him wretched from the conflict within 
him. She talked and argued with him until 
she had brought back the devil of cruelty, 
hatred, and bigotry to its former place in 
the young man's heart, and then, without 
delay, bade him give the order for the fatal 
signal. He commanded the bell to be rung, 
— it was the bell of the Palace of Justice; 
but that, Catherine thought, was so far that 
the remorse of the king might return before 
the order could be executed; so, thirsting 
for blood, she caused the bell of St. Germain 
- — a church close by the Louvre, the palace 



MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 45 

where they were all staying— to be rung. 
Breaking through the stillness of the night, 
the knell boomed over the dark city, and in 
a few moments the glare of lighted torches 
burst from the windows, except those of the 
Protestants, who started in terror from their 
beds. 

The queen and her son, with members of 
the court, were sitting at an open # window to 
witness the scene. But a guilty fear seized 
upon them all, and, without a word to each 
other, the whole company drew back at the 
same instant, just as the murderers of Jesus, 
when about to seize him in the garden, at 
first went backwards and straightway fell to 
the ground. 

A messenger was sent to call back the 
Duke of Guise and bid him spare Coligny; 
but the duke was gone, and Coligny was the 
first victim. Housed by the tumult, the 
venerable admiral had risen from his bed 
and leaned against the wall in prayer. His 
friends and servants hurried into his room, 
unable to defend the house against the mob. 
They told him resistance was no longer pos- 



46 MAETYES OF FKA2STCE. 

sible, — that God, and not the king, called 
him now. He told them to save themselves ; 
for himself he was not afraid to die, but 
committed his soul to God. As they fled, a 
servant of the Duke of Guise, named Besme, 
entered the chamber, sword in hand. "Are 
you Coligny?" he demanded. The admiral, 
seated in an arm-chair, looking calmly at 
the murderer, replied, " I am, indeed ; but 
respect my gray hairs, young man : what- 
ever you do, you cannot shorten my life." 
Besme only replied by plunging the sword 
up to the hilt in his breast. Others, rushing 
in, mangled the body with their swords, 
until they heard the Duke of Guise shout- 
ing under the window, " Besme, have you 
done?" Another cried out he would not be- 
lieve it until he saw the body; and so the 
body, gashed and disfigured with wounds, 
was thrown out of the window. The duke 
was obliged to wipe the blood from the face 
with his handkerchief, to assure himself that 
there was no mistake. Then, giving the pros- 
trate body a kick, he exclaimed, "Lie there, 
venomous beast! Thou shalt no more spit 



MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 47 

thy poison." In very much the same manner, 
this bloody duke himself was murdered and 
his body kicked aside, not by Protestants, 
but by his own king, Henry III. 

This was the beginning of the long-pre- 
pared work of slaughter. The bell of the 
Palace of Justice was now tolled, and the 
multitude, let loose, burst into a terrible 
shout as they rushed upon their victims. 
They broke open the doors and windows of 
the unprotected Huguenots' dwellings, and 
rushed through all the apartments, murder- 
ing young and old, without distinction, and 
tossing the bodies out upon the pavements. 
Nothing was now to be heard but the crash 
of stones and hatchets, the clang of arms, 
the shrieks of men, women, and children, 
minded with oaths and furious exclama- 

o 

tions and blasphemies, such as the world 
scarce ever heard before. The streets 
streamed with blood, and besjan to be closed 

/ o CO 

up with the dead and gashed bodies. The 
victims and their dwellings were robbed by 
the soldiers, for they were greedy for gain 
as well as thirsty for blood. Guise and his 



48 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

companions ran about among the mob ; cry- 
ing out, "Kill! kill! Bleeding is good in Au- 
gust, Kill! kill! the king commands! For 
the king ! for the king ! Huguenot ! Hu- 
guenot!" Soldiers were let into the palace 
to murder the Huguenot gentlemen who had 
been lodged there as guests at the wedding. 
None were spared but Navarre, who pro- 
fessed to give up his religion, and Conde, 
who still amid that scene of carnage and 
terror courageously held fast to his faith. 
The king himself, now no longer timid or 
hesitating, but frantic, like all the rest, with 
thirst for blood, looked out upon the car- 
nage from the windows of the palace. 
Some say he even assisted by shooting 
down the fugitives as they tried to escape, 
Even the ladies of the court amused them- 
selves with examining the bodies of the Hu- 
guenot gentlemen with whom they had been 
feasting only the week before. Catherine 
ran like a tigress from room to room in the 
palace, ridiculing such of the ladies as 
showed pity and would have protected the 
wounded gentlemen. The head of Admiral 



MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 4^ 

Coligny was sent to her, that she might have 
the horrid satisfaction of gazing upon that 
mark of the full success of her plot. 

Never did Sabbath sun rise upon a scene 
like this. Never did it reveal a work more 
like the work of devils. Never did it seem 
to speak of mercy to a world that seemed 
more hopelessly guilty and lost than this. 
Never were its lessons of the finished work 
of creation and redemption so grossly con- 
tradicted by a work of unmixed malice and 
unsparing destruction. As the night broke 
away, there were seen on the one side the 
living, still raging for blood, as a roaring 
lion seeking more victims to devour; and 
on the other, the heaps of bloody corpses 
piled in the streets or floating down the 
river Seine, while their spirits had gone to 
join those whom John in the Revelation 
tells us he saw under the altar, crying with a 
loud voice, saying, " How long, Lord, holy 
and true, dost thou not judge and avenge 
our blood on thern that dwell on the earth? 
And it was said unto them that they should 
rest yet for a little season, until their fellow- 



50 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

servants also, and their brethren that should 
be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. " 

The massacre continued through seven 
days. Five hundred persons of rank, and 
ten thousand others, were victims. No pen 
can record the horrors that were perpe- 
trated. Men stabbed infants while play- 
ing innocently in their arms. Children even 
killed children smaller than themselves. 
Servants murdered their masters. And 
when Huguenot parents were dead, Popish 
aunts and uncles put to death the orphans. 
When once the brutal passions of the mob 
were thoroughly roused, they did not al- 
ways distinguish carefully between heretic 
and orthodox. Many Romanists were killed 
for the sake of their money ; and a professor 
of mathematics in the Romish University 
of the Sorbonne was hunted out of the 
cellar of his house, killed, thrown from a 
window, and his body treated in the most 
shameful manner. A brother professor was 
so shocked at the sight that he died of 
horror. 

The priests were busy keeping up the rage 



MASSACEE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 51 

of the mob from day to day. On Sunday, 
or. as some say, the day after, a white thorn- 
tree in a burial-ground happened to put 
forth some blossoms. An old monk pub- 
lished the fact as a miracle, and said it was 
intended to show that the Church was once 
more putting forth her blossoms, and that so 
her friends (by which you are to understand 
these murderers of the Huguenots) should 
feel encouraged to carry on their work of de- 
struction. 

• At last the torrent of death flowed so 
deep that even the infamous Duke of Guise 
was alarmed, and the king issued order 
after order, posted up on the corners of the 
streets, to cease from violence. But the 
people gave no heed. They had cast off all 
restraint, and were too well pleased with the 
plunder which they might carry on in con- 
nection with their work of blood. 4~s late 
as Thursday the carnage was still going on, 
while the king and court, followed by a long 
train of devotees, walked in procession, 
chanting psalms, and daring to give thanks 
to a God of justice and of love on the com- 



52 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

pletion of the darkest, bloodiest, hate-fullest 
work in the history of civilized men. 

Some remarkable escapes were made. 
Sully, then a young student in Paris, put on 
his scholar's gown and took a Romish book 
of devotions, called a Missal, under his arm, 
and walked through the streets unharmed in 
the height of the carnage. He lived to be- 
come prime minister of France under King 
Henry of Navarre. Admiral Coligny's chap- 
lain, whose name was Merlin, while trying 
to escape by climbing along the tops of the 
houses, fell through into a hay-loft and lay 
there, fearing to come out, for many days. 
And what do you suppose kept him alive all 
this while ? What kept God's prophet Eli- 
jah alive when all the common supplies of 
food were cut off? Scarcely ever were two 
cases of the special care of Providence for 
his people more alike. Every day a hen 
came to the lonely hay-loft and laid an egg ; 
and that sufficed to keep the chaplain alive 
as long as the dreary confinement lasted. 
And such of the Huguenots as lodged in a 
part of Paris separated from the palace and 



MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 53 

the bloody court by the river Seine ; started 
out on Sunday morning to cross over and 
inquire into the disturbance ; but the king, 
being over-hasty, ordered the soldiers to fire 
upon them before they got into their boats. 
This was warning enough for them : they 
turned and fled, and their enemies were un- 
able to overtake them. 

We fear to weary and disgust our readers 
with tales of blood, or we would take you 
from Paris to many other cities of France 
where, as had been agreed upon beforehand, 
at the same time the like dreadful deeds 
were done. At Lyons several hundred 
Huguenots were gathered in the different 
prisons; but the hangman and the soldiers 
both refused to fall upon them; and the 
monks had some difficulty in getting men 
wicked enough to undertake the massacre. 
Would you not have pitied those poor people 
crowded in those dungeons ? would not your 
hearts have bled to see little children hang- 
ing on the necks of their parents, parents 
holding their dear infants to their bosoms, 
brothers and friends trying to encourage 

5* 



54 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

each other in their dreadful condition, until 
at length brutal, or rather fiend-like, men 
were found, who, at the bidding of the 
priests, rushed in upon them, and with 
clubs, knives, and hatchets cut them down 
in cold blood. 

The river Rhone was loaded with car- 
casses, and the water became so foul with 
blood that it could not be drunk. At Aries 
even the wells became corrupt. The fish died 
in the river, and the people sickened and 
sent to distant places for water. Thus the 
wicked persecutors of the Huguenots brought 
on themselves one of the same plagues which 
God visited on the persecutors of the He- 
brews in the land of bondage. 

No one can tell how many victims fell a 
sacrifice to Popish hatred in France on this 
memorable 24th of August, 1572. Popish 
authorities vary; some putting the number 
at twenty-five thousand, others going as 
high as one hundred thousand. It is known 
in Protestant history as the Massacee of 
St. Baetholomew ; and, as it excited indigna- 
tion and disgust almost everywhere in Europe 



MASSACEE OF ST. BAETHOLOMEW. 55 

when it became known, so now it can 
scarcely be called to mind without a shudder, 
although nearly three hundred years have 
flown by. 

Quite the opposite of all this was the 
feeling in the court of Eome. There the 
news was welcomed with extravagant joy; 
cannon were fired, and bells were rung. 
The news was regarded as so valuable 
that the messenger who brought it was 
rewarded with a thousand crowns. The 
Pope and all the Romish clergy, high and 
low, walked in a triumphal procession, and 
a sermon was preached, showing what cause 
of joy had been given to the Church. 
Paintings were made of particular scenes in 
the massacre : one of them represented the 
death of Admiral Coligny. These paintings 
were hung on the walls of the Pope's palace, 
expressing his desire to keep in constant re- 
membrance the scenes imitated in the paint- 
ing. And, as if this were not shame enough 
for him, he had a medal or coin struck, bear- 
ing his name, "Pope Gregory XlIL, in his 
first year," on one side, and on the other 



56 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

the words, " Slaughter of the Huguenots." 
Now, kings and persons in authority strike 
medals only when something has taken place 
which they think worthy of the constant 
and grateful remembrance of the whole 
people. This, then, was the Pope's opinion 
of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The 
Pope's followers believe him never to be in 
fault, and, of course, neither should he } nor 
any Pope after him, alter his opinions. In 
regard to this massacre we believe the Popes 
have been as unchangeable as the most 
zealous Papist has ever asserted them to be. 
How astonishing, how dreadful, to regard 
this awful deed, this work of cruelty, out- 
rage, and bloodshed, in which babes and 
children and unoffending, unprotected men 
and women were treacherously betrayed and 
slaughtered like sheep, as a cause of re- 
joicing and thanksgiving to God ! 

Poor King Charles was not so well satis- 
fied with what he had done and permitted. 
On the very next day after the massacre 
had begun, he wrote letters to the governors 
of the provinces, throwing the blame upon 



MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 57 

others, and protesting that it had been done 
without his knowledge. But, frightened at 
the prospect of another civil war, and in- 
fluenced by his mother Catherine, on the day 
following, Tuesday, the 26th, he appeared 
in the court of Parliament, with Henry of 
Navarre in his company, and there openly 
declared that he had been driven to these 
severe measures by the seditious plots of the 
Huguenots, who, he said, intended to kill 
him and" put the Prince of Cond6 in his 
place. Extreme dangers, he said, required 
extreme remedies ; and he, therefore, wished 
all the world to know that the murders of 
the last few days had been authorized by his 
command. 

This is the king out-of-doors and in his 
robes of state. You would think him com- 
fortable enough in mind. But at home and 
by himself, the guilty man's thoughts troubled 
him, just as any man's, who wore no crown 
and no fine robes, at the recollection of a 
deed of monstrous wickedness. He never 
knew a moment's peace. Remorse gnawed 
his heart. Terrible sights haunted him. He 



58 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

seemed to see the Huguenots, covered with, 
blood and wounds, falling continually around 
him. Horrible dreams woke him up in the 
depth of night; and day and night he lived 
in fear of a rebellion among his outraged 
subjects. Depressed in mind ; his health at 
last gave way. His fears of insurrection 
were now substituted by the reality itself : 
he took his bed, and never arose ; and France, 
even before his death, hastened to cast him 
off. His mother came to him with accounts 
of enemies captured and put to death ; but 
he turned away from her, having had enough 
of cruelty. His limbs were drawn up with 
spasms. Blood oozed from his body, so that 
he lay bathed in gore in his own bed, suffer- 
ing more than the agonies of many a one 
of the miserable victims of his merciless 
persecutions. 

The faithful old nurse who waited at the 
king's bedside was a Huguenot, and into 
her ear he poured his dying confessions : — 
u Ah, my dear nurse, what bad advice have 
I followed ! My God, forgive me ! God, 
have pity on me ! What will become of all 



MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 59 

this ? What shall I do ? I feel it now ! I 
am lost !" Navarre, who was a prisoner on 
charge - of taking part in the insurrection, 
was brought to his bedside on the day of his 
death. "He is my brother!" exclaimed the 
king, stretching out his arms to him. On 
the 30th day of March, 1574, but little 
more than eighteen months after the mas- 
sacre, and when not yet twenty-five years of 
age, shrieking and raving, so that all the 
Popes that ever lived could not have com- 
forted him, this miserable monarch came to 
his end, the victim, in all probability, of 
poison administered by accomplices of his 
own more hardened and unnatural mother. 



60 MAETYES OF FRANCE. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EDICT OF NANTES TO THE REVOCATION. 

Twenty-six years afterwards, when the 
same Henry of Navarre, whom we saw re- 
nouncing his religion on the morning; of the 
massacre, was King of France, with the 
title of Henry IV., the Huguenots were still 
numerous and powerful. The massacre had 
not destroyed them. Nor had it satisfied 
the hatred of Home; for persecutions were 
kept up pretty much after the old fashion 
until the period which I am now describing. 

In the year 1598, the Huguenots drew up 
a paper which they called " Complaints of 
the Reformed Churches of France, concern- 
ing the acts of violence which they have 
suffered in many parts of the kingdom, and 
on account of which they have often appealed 
to His Majesty and the gentlemen of his 



EDICT OF NANTES. 61 

Council." This paper describes the suffer- 
ings they endured on account of their reli- 
gion, and pleads with the king, who once was 
one of themselves, to give them some relief. 
Even the king's sister, who was a Protestant, 
dared not take the communion in the city 
of Rouen, where she was staying, but was 
obliged to go to another place, because the 
Pope's officers did not please to permit it in 
that city. 

The king, who was perhaps not more sin- 
cere in his profession of one religion than 
another, and who was regarded with dis- 
trust by the Papists, granted, to a very 
great extent, the prayer of the Huguenots, 
in what is called the Edict of Nantes, a very 
celebrated document in the history of France. 
This paper was signed by Henry, in the city 
of Nantes, on the 7th of April, 1598. It is 
said that two distinguished Protestants, De 
Thou and Lord de Calignon, spent nearly 
three years in arranging the particulars of 
this edict. By this the Huguenots wero 
allowed to worship in public in a greater 
number of towns; both Huguenots and 



62 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

Romanists were obliged to exercise charity 
, towards each other ; new arrangements were 
made in the courts of justice, in order that 
the Huguenots might be more certain of fair 
treatment: and a considerable sum of money- 
was distributed among the universities, 
academies, and churches of the Reformed. 

But it seems scarcely worth while to 
delay with the description of an act that, 
with all its promises, accomplished so little 
for the welfare of the Huguenots, and proved 
so weak a defence against the rage of the 
persecutors. Twelve years afterwards, King 
Henry, the last hope of the Huguenots in 
the royal family of France (and he scarcely 
better than a broken reed), was taken away 
by the assassin's knife. And now for three- 
quarters of a century we behold them suffer- 
ing under wrong and cruelty and outrage of 
every kind, gradually growing worse and 
more destructive, until at length the great 
masses were driven into foreign lands. In 
many places the Edict of Nantes was not 
registered as a law. The king who fol- 
lowed Henry, Louis XIII., gave little heed 



EDICT OF NANTES. 63 

to its requirements. The priests and Romish 
clergy generally renewed their efforts to 
stir up the people against the Huguenots. 
The Jesuits were permitted, by express act 
of the king, to live in their towns. 

A very great zeal was shown by the 
Papists for the conversion, as they called it, 
of the Reformed. Monks were sent, in com- 
pany with soldiers, into the districts where 
they lived, to preach and argue and persuade 
the miserable people, and to add threats of 
violence if they refused to be persuaded. 
Many yielded rather than suffer the horrors 
of former years. They had not the spirit 
of the Huguenots of an earlier age. Dis- 
appointed and deceived over and over again, 
their courage forsook them. Yet this was 
true only partially. The city of Rochelle, 
the Huguenots' stronghold, withstood the 
armies of the king a whole year, and sur- 
rendered, in 1629, only after suffering the 
extreme horrors of famine. 

Louis XIV. came to the throne in 1643, 
but was not of age until 1652. During that 
time, and for four years after, — in all, thirteen 



64 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

years, — the Edict of Nantes was observed; 
for the king found the Huguenots among his 
very best friends in the difficulties he en- 
countered in securing the throne. But the 
Papists grew impatient at seeing these hated 
people in any degree of favor, and in 1656 
the king was led to explain his intentions, 
which he did in such a manner as to en- 
courage their cruel enemies to renew their 
persecutions. Four years afterwards, the 
Protestant Churches were forbidden to meet 
by their representatives in a national as- 
sembly, as they had been accustomed to do. 
Thus they might never come together again 
in a public manner from all parts of the 
country, to consult together, and lay plans 
and unite in prayer to God for assistance, 
which in their sad condition was very need- 
ful and comforting. Henceforth they must 
bear their hard burdens and seek for relief 
or escape apart. Even the assemblies of 
churches in separate provinces, called Provin- 
cial Synods, were made useless by the require- 
ment of the king that a Popish officer should 
always be present at their meetings. 



EDICT OF NANTES. 65 

When a dying mother calls her children 
to her bedside, we expect it to be for the 
purpose of giving them good advice, of get- 
ting their solemn promise to forsake sin and 
to live so as to please God in this world and 
be happy in the next. From what we have 
already seen of the mother of these perse- 
cuting kings of France, we are not much 
surprised to learn that Anne, the mother of 
Louis XIV., charged her son from her dying 
bed never to cease his efforts to destroy the 
Huguenots. We are prepared, too, to hear 
that her son willingly pledged himself to 
carry out her wish. Soon afterwards, on the 
2d of April, 1666, he signed a declaration 
of fifty-nine articles, which was the summing 
up of the worst edicts against the Huguenots 
which had been issued separately during his 
reign. Still, open violence was not very 
often done to them. Preaching was inter- 
fered with. Huguenot workmen and trades- 
people were hindered in carrying on their 
business, so that Popish workmen might 
have the advantage. Huguenot children 
were persuaded or stolen away from their 



66 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

parents and brought up as Eoman Catholics. 
The dying Huguenots were sought out by 
the priests and worried with exhortations 
to give up their religion, and even their dead 
bodies stolen away and buried by the priests, 
who then boasted that they had been con- 
verted to their faith. Money was used to 
buy over such of the Huguenots as were in 
want ; and a plan was started to bring the 
whole Keformed Church into union with that 
of Rome, without violence, by bribing and 
deceiving the ministry. Wherever a church 
was unable to support its own minister, the 
king forbade other ministers to preach to 
them, a,nd afterwards forbade the stronger 
churches to give money to the weaker for 
the support of their ministers-. Church- 
buildings were actually torn down to break 
up the congregations, soldiers standing by to 
prevent the aggrieved people from inter- 
fering. 

Some bright examples of Christian firm- 
ness, and of the power of truth even on , 
Eomanists, appear in the midst of this op- 
position. 



EDICT OF NANTES. 67 

A gentleman named Du Chail, who pro- 
fessed to be a Huguenot, but who was 
charmed by the beauty and wealth of a 
Eoman Catholic lady, had changed his 
religion to get her for his wife, — just as 
people, for the very same reason, do now-a- 
days. But soon after the marriage, both 
himself and his wife became deeply inte- 
rested in religion, and desired to confess 
Christ among his persecuted people. This 
would have been a very dangerous thing for 
Du Chail ; for the Papists watched their con- 
verts very closely, and were very unwilling to 
have them go back into the Reformed Com- 
munion again. Knowing these things, he 
delayed until he fell sick, and on his sick 
and dying bed he sent for a Huguenot min- 
ister and solemnly professed his faith in 
Christ to him. The minister was put in 
prison for visiting him, and Du Chail him- 
self was harassed by visits from officers and 
monks until he died. His wife, too, was 
separated from him, and her own mother 
aided the officers in trying to keep her from 
her husband's dying bed. But what cared 



68 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

this faithful wife for their commands ? 
Through avenues watched by soldiers, she 
contrived to find her way to her husband's 
chamber, and, in spite of priests, cruel 
mother, and soldiers, she waited at his bed- 
side until the very last. 

As the monks did not know of the change 
which she had experienced, they left her chil- 
dren in her own hands, and she brought them 
up in the faith of their father. When at 
length her conversion was discovered and the 
children were taken from her and put in the 
care of the Jesuits, this faithful and per- 
severing mother followed them up, and 
managed to continue her instructions, and 
even to outdo the crafty Jesuits by carrying 
them away and hiding them so closely that 
they could not be found. 

Meanwhile, the mother of Madame du 
Ohail died; and, as she would not turn Ro- 
man Catholic again, the Jesuits kept the 
property which would have fallen to her. 
They had also kept her husband's property 
from her. So this daughter of a nobleman 
chose poverty and disgrace rather than deny 



EDICT OF NANTES. 69 

the Saviour and the truth which she had. 
found in the Protestant Church. Her hus- 
band taken from her, alone in the midst of 
bitter enemies, she continued faithful, and 
by her courageous efforts at length escaped 
safely, with five of her children, to the hos- 
pitable shores of Protestant England. This 
was in 1681. 

Now the Huguenots began to leave their 
beloved but unfriendly country in increasing 
numbers. It would have been well for many 
who remained if they had gone earlier. 
But home and native country are dear to us 
even in the midst of persecution, and many, 
I suppose, preferred suffering, and even 
death, to leaving their " beautiful France." 

A feeble attempt was made by a number 
of congregations to re-establish the services 
which had been forbidden by the king. The 
Papists charged them with rebellion, and 
pretended that they meant to get up another 
war, and made this an excuse for taking up 
arms against them. The Huguenots, in self- 
defence, also took up arms, and soon a battle 
was fought at Bordeaux. The Papists, as 



70 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

usual, were successful ; and from that time 
they laid aside all moderation, and pursued 
the unhappy Huguenots with fire and sword 
to their dwellings, and to the very mountains 
whither they fled for refuge. x The brutal 
soldiers were let loose among the unarmed 
people, and allowed to commit every crime 
and outrage upon them. The people were 
compelled to keep the soldiers in their 
families and furnish them with food and 
lodgings. No tongue can tell the horror with 
which they regarded these monsters whom 
they were obliged to take to their own fire- 
sides. These men were called dragoons; and 
their visits to the defenceless people go by 
the name of dragonnades. Few words call 
up such images of horror and desolation, of 
wrongs and outrage, of firesides polluted with 
blood, of happy homes laid waste, of fair 
fields ravaged, of flourishing towns reduced 
to ashes, as this word dragonnade. 

Writers of history dwell upon the reign 
of Louis XIV. with more than common inte- 
rest. They praise his talents, they admire 
the splendor of the palaces and other build- 



EDICT OF NANTES, 71 

ings which he reared; they cannot grow 
weary of the fine writers and orators and 
philosophers whom he encouraged and col- 
lected around his court. They speak of him 
as the handsomest man in France. They 
tell us of his long reign, lasting seventy-two 
years and filled with wonderful and interest- 
ing events. They often call him Louis the 
Great. They forget the dragonnades. They 
are enough to stain the pride of all his glory 
and to cover the whole of his long reign 
with the deepest disgrace. 

A Reformed minister, named Isaac Horn el, 
was barbarously put to death by punishment 
which lasted through two days. One bone 
after another was cruelly broken by blows 
from a heavy iron bar. Thus, abundance of 
time was given for the torture to work upon 
his feelings and his resolution; but he re- 
mained unshaken through all.. 

After the first blow had been given, he 
was asked if he would turn Catholic. " How, 
my lords?" was his answer. "If I had in- 
tended to change my religion, I would have 
done it before my bones were thus broken. 



72 MARTYKS OF FEANCE. 

Courage, my soul ! courage ! Thou shalt 
presently enjoy the delights of heaven." 
Turning to his faithful wife, who would 
not leave him in his sufferings, he bade 
her farewell, and added, " Though you see 
my bones broken to shivers, my soul is 
filled with un-utterable joys." 

He did not utter a single cry, but lay in 
silence during the whole of those two dread- 
ful days, with his eyes turned up to heaven. 
This was in 1683. 

We read also of young children impri- 
soned, beaten, and tormented in every way 
to make them turn Papist. Some of 
them remained firm through every trial. 
Others only yielded after the most horrible 
sufferings. 

So many churches were shut up, that the 
Reformed, in many neighborhoods, were 
obliged to travel great distances to hear 
the word preached. What would you 
think of travelling as far as from Phila- 
delphia to New York to attend worship, and 
that not by railroad, but on foot, or tediously 
journeying in a rude wagon ? The Hugue- 



EDICT OF NANTES. 73 

nots had no choice, and they often did it. 
Some were rich, and could ride; some were 
young and hearty, and would not suffer 
greatly in walking that distance. But aged 
persons, too, went on the pilgrimage: even 
when seventy and eighty years old, they 
slowly dragged themselves to the distant 
house of worship that as yet had not fallen 
under the displeasure of the king. 

Sometimes, after going miles through the 
cold, with babes in their arms to be baptized, 
and couples to be married, great would be 
their astonishment and grief to find that 
the king and his wicked officers had been 
before them, and the distant church closed 
against them. Sadly the great assembly 
would turn away, never to meet again in 
this world. It is only at such a time that 
men realize how great and precious is the 
privilege of worshipping in God's house. 

Should we not think of these examples 
of zeal for God's house, and be ashamed that 
we ever become weary or think it a task to 
go the little distance we have to travel in 
reaching our own place of worship ? 

7 



74 MAETYBS OF FRANCE. 

New edicts went forth against the perse- 
cuted people, and again they sought to fly 
from France; but the king, greedy of the 
blood of his miserable subjects, forbade 
such removals, ordered the roads to be 
watched, and ships and fishing-boats to be 
searched for the fugitives. It was like let- 
ting the hounds loose upon animals in an 
enclosure from which they could not escape 
but must submit to be worried to death. 
At last, on the 18th of October, 1685, every 
shadow of protection which the law gave 
them was taken away by the repeal, or Re- 
vocation, as it is called, of the Edict of 
Nantes. This edict, it will be remembered, 
was granted to the Reformed by Henry IV., 
himself once a Protestant. It had never 
been faithfully observed by the Papists. 
Under Louis XIV. especially, it was little 
more than a dead letter on the law-books. 
But now it was abolished at a stroke of the 
pen, and severe laws against the Reformed 
were put in its place. They were not to meet 
for worship anywhere. Their ministers 
were commanded to turn Catholics or leave 



EDICT OF NANTES. 75 

France in fifteen days. Their schools were to 
be given up. Their children were to be 
baptized by priests and brought up Catho- 
lics; and no person, young or old, was 
allowed to leave the kingdom. Even this 
edict, the aim of which is clearly the anni- 
hilation of Calvinism and a pure gospel in 
France, contained a clause permitting the 
Reformed who submitted to the loss of all 
religious privileges, and who gave up their 
children to the teachings of the priests, to 
live at peace in France until they chose to 
become Papists. Many Huguenot merchants 
in Paris, who were preparing to leave the 
country, were persuaded to give up their pur- 
pose and remain, in view of this clause. But 
they only stayed for fresh dragonnades. 
The permission meant nothing. Some of 
the better class of Romanists saw how shame- 
ful it would be to go contrary to the plain 
meaning of the clause, and stayed the tide 
of violence; but they were soon told that 
the king wished all who refused to think as 
he did, to feel the utmost severities. So 
the priests and the soldiers were at full 



76 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

liberty to exercise their customary barbari- 
ties on the people. And they did it. 

So great was the distress of the Hugue- 
nots that many yielded, and to outward ap- 
pearance became Romanists. Many others, 
in spite of the king's prohibition, attempted 
to escape from the country. Some of these 
were discovered, and cruelly punished. Often 
when they thought themselves safe in the 
ships, the sailors turned out to be as zealous 
Papists as any in their own country, and 
they were carried immediately back and 
given up to the authorities. Some were 
taken captive by pirate vessels when in sight 
of a friendly country, and were carried to 
Barbary, where the French consuls found 
them, put chains on them, and sent them 
back to France just as if they were crimi- 
nals who had escaped from jail. Yet many 
got away in safety. With money they could 
even bribe the officers on the very ships 
which had been sent to watch them ; and in 
this way many were carried across the Chan- 
nel to England in French vessels-of-war. 
All Protestant countries welcomed them; 



EDICT OF NANTES. 77 

but in their own country they found no 
pity. Jails, monasteries, and galleys, or 
prison- ships, were crowded to the utmost 
with captives ; and when they could not 
make room for any more in these places, they 
shipped them to America and put them to 
work on plantations like slaves. 

But, while many tried to escape, several 
of the ministers who had been sent out of 
the country felt it their duty to come back 
and encourage, and, whenever possible, 
preach to, their suffering congregations. 
Far off from the dwellings of men, in deep 
forests, the unhoused congregations would 
gather, and listen to these bold men who 
hazarded their lives for their sakes and the 
gospel's. Some of them soon gave up their 
dangerous labours; but others of these 
Pastors of the Desert, as they were called, 
continued in that honorable service until 
the day of their death. 

Sometimes the soldiers surprised these 
congregations. Creeping up quietly, they 
burst upon them in the midst of their wor- 
ship, shot down some, and took all the rest 

7* 



/« MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

prisoners. For the single offence of attend- 
ing these meetings, men were put to death 
with tortures. The same treatment befell 
those who opened their houses to ministers ; 
and even praying to God was regarded as 
a crime when not done according to Romish 
rules. These men would have joined with 
the wicked counsellors of Darius in throwing 
pious Daniel into the den of lions. Often 
the wicked judges trembled before the men 
whom they condemned to death, as they 
preached Christ before them. Drums were 
beaten on the scaffold to drown their voices. 
The struggle to crush the truth out of 
France by forced conversions, dragonnades, 
and murders, was unsuccessful. The king 
gave up the attempt, and, hoping to ac- 
complish the end by other means, withdrew 
his prohibition, and now issued a positive 
command to the Huguenots to leave the 
country. They went. Bidding farewell to 
their homes, no longer safe from invasion 
and outrage, and to their beautiful country, 
which seemed to cast out its own most faith- 
ful children, they went. In vast numbers, — 



EDICT OF NANTES. 79 

some say as many as eight hundred thousand, 
some say five hundred thousand, — to all 
Protestant countries these exiles for con- 
science r sake directed their steps. And as 
their retreating footsteps disappeared from 
the highways, and their ships went down 
from the horizon of France, the hopes of the 
French nation for true religion, for solid 
peace, for wholesome laws, and for liberty, 
in like manner disappeared, and the dark 
shadow of infidelity, of atheism, of revolu- 
tion, of military despotism, of mistrust, un- 
certainty, and disquiet, arose in her sky; 
and there it is hanging now. 

Wherever the banished Huguenots went, 
they carried with them both the principles 
of true religion and the excellent qualities 
and good habits which always accompany 
true religion embraced and believed in as 
they did it. In Germany they formed whole 
towns and sections of cities, and brought in 
trades which the Germans had not known 
before. A suburb of London was filled with 
French mechanics. The Prince of Orange 
gained whole regiments of the bravest sol- 



80 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

diers from their ranks. A colony of Hugue- 
nots settled as far away from home as the 
Cape of Good Hope. 

At that early day, our own happy land, 
too, was open to the victims of persecution 
flying from every country; and thus the 
noblest, most earnest-minded people of the 
civilized world, the very sort of persons to 
found a good government and to endure the 
trials necessary in establishing it, were 
brought to our shores. Among these were 
the banished Huguenots. They landed all 
along our coast, and here found homes 
where they might worship God as his word 
ordained, with none to molest them or make 
them afraid. Many of the best men of our 
land from that time to this have been the 
descendants of those persecuted Huguenots 
whom Romish intolerance drove from their 
native France. 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 81 



CHAPTER V. 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 



The reader will gain a clearer idea of the 
condition of the persecuted Protestants of 
France at this time, if he follows us in one 
or two stories, which we will now narrate, 
of the sufferings of individuals and families, 
both in remaining under the cruel laws 
enacted against them, and in trying to get 
away from their inhospitable country. We 
shall commence with a story written by one 
of the sufferers himself, — though we shall put 
it into a smaller compass than the original. 

STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 

Jean (or John, as Ave may call him in 
our tongue) married early in life, and was 
the father of twelve children. To sustain 
this large family, he had little more than 
the results of his daily labors. He was a 



82 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

reader in the Protestant church of the town 
of Moulle, where he lived, — some forty miles 
from the famous city of Rochelle. He was 
also a public notary, and taught a number 
of scholars, twelve of whom boarded in his 
house. Migault was a man of piety, of con- 
tented and thankful disposition, and a use- 
ful and respected citizen, such as form the 
true strength and hope of the state. But he 
was a Protestant, and therefore must expect 
to be treated -as if he were among the worst 
enemies of his country, the vilest and most 
dangerous of criminals. Several years before 
the Edict of Nantes, his business was sadly 
crippled by measures taken against the Pro- 
testants: so that he was led in February, 
1681, to remove to the neighboring town of 
Mougon. 

Here the sad story of his more severe 
trials begins. Four or five months after his 
arrival, the whole country was thrown into 
a paroxysm of terror by the appearance of 
a regiment of dragoons in the vicinity. A 
herd of savage beasts let loose would have 
been more welcome and less disastrous to 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 83 

the peaceful people than these messengers 
of Popish zeal, — these missionaries charged 
with the duty of converting them, by the 
most unrestrained exercise of violence and 
oppression, to the Catholic faith. 

It seems that the very first province in 
which the peculiar form of military oppres- 
sion called "dragooning" was used against 
the Huguenots, was the one in which Migault 
lived. At that time it was called Poitou, 
and embraced the territory now included in 
the departments of Vienne, Deux Sevres, 
and Vendee, the latter reaching the sea near 
the middle of the west coast of France. 

That province, says ths historian of the 
French Protestant refugees, which was 
filled with Protestants, had for intendant 
Marillac, who had hitherto exercised such 
prudence and moderation in his office as to 
endear him to both Protestants and Roman- 
ists. But, when he saw the king anxious for 
the "conversion" of his Protestant subjects, 
he changed his conduct, and entered zealously 
into the business. The plan of quartering 
troops upon the "Religionists," as they were 



84 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

called, had just been determined upon: Ma- 
rillac was chosen as a fit instrument to com- 
mence the execution. 

On the 18th of March ; Louvois, the Minis- 
ter of War, announced to him that, in ac- 
cordance with the orders of the king, he sent 
him a regiment of cavalry. "His majesty 
will find it good," he wrote, "that the 
greater number of the privates and officers 
should be quartered on the Protestants; but 
he does not think it necessary to provide 
quarters for them all. If, according to a just 
•partition, the Religionists are able to sup- 
port ten, you may quarter twenty upon 
them." The following month he caused an 
ordinance to be signed by the king, which 
granted, to all those who should be con- 
verted, exemption from the quartering of 
troopers during two years. 

Marillac sent the dragoons into those towns 
of Poitou which contained most Huguenots. 
They were quartered only upon them, — upon 
the very poorest, too, and upon widows, who 
until that time had been exempt from such 
service. In many villages the priests fol- 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 85 

lowed them through the streets, crying, 
"Courage, gentlemen! it is the intention of 
the king that these dogs of Huguenots should 
be pillaged and sacked." The soldiers en- 
tered the houses sword in hand, sometimes, 
crying, "Kill! kill ! ,? to frighten the women 
and children. So long as the inhabitants 
could satisfy their rapacity, they suffered no 
worse than pillage. But when their money 
was expended, the price of their furniture con- 
sumed, and the ornaments and garments of 
their wives disposed of, the dragoons either 
seized them by the hair to drag them to 
church, or, if they suffered them to remain 
in their houses, made use of threats, out- 
rages, and even tortures, to compel them to 
be converted. They burnt at slow fires the 
feet and hands of some ; they broke the ribs, 
legs, or arms of others, with blows of sticks. 
Many had their lips burned with hot irons. 
Others were cast into damp dungeons, with 
threats of leaving them there to rot. The 
soldiers said that every thing was per- 
mitted to them except murder and rape. 
Among other tortures employed by these 



86 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

monsters on their errand of conversion was, 
wearing out their victims by depriving them 
of sleep, by unceasing and horrible noises, 
such as the beating of drams, blasphemies, 
hideous outcries, crashing of furniture, and, 
by constant shaking, compelling the wretched 
beings to stand upright until they were re- 
duced to such a state that they knew not 
what they did. 

It is not surprising that these outrageous 
measures in many instances seemed to ac- 
complish their object. Every day, numbers 
of forced converts were seen hastening to 
attend mass. Such was the terror occa- 
sioned by the arrival of the dragoons, in 
consequence of the cruelties of which they 
had been guilty, that it is said a single sol- 
dier has been known to determine all the first 
families in the place to abjure their religion, 
by merely riding into the town with some 
scraps of paper in his hand, which he pre- 
tended were quartermaster's billets. 

"Conversions" were counted, not by in- 
dividuals, but by whole provinces. Not a 
day passed that the king did not receive 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 87 

some courier who brought him news of con- 
versions by thousands. In Bordeaux, it 
was said, they numbered sixty thousand; in 
Montauban, twenty thousand; in the Ce- 
vennes district so rapid were these external 
changes, that the whole Protestant popula- 
tion, two hundred and forty thousand in num- 
ber, were spoken of as likely to become Cath- 
olics within a month. The king and the 
whole court believed that Protestantism was 
annihilated in France by these measures. 

But the faithful ones were far more nu- 
merous than their persecutors imagined. 
Jean Migault was not to be driven from his 
most sacred belief, even by the prospect 
of such direful visitations. He wisely pre- 
pared to meet the shock. His eleven older 
children were distributed among six friendly 
families, and a nurse was provided for the 
youngest, then an infant: Migault and his 
wife alone remained in their home. Events 
soon occurred which proved the wisdom of 
these measures. On the 22d of August, as 
the Protestant inhabitants of the place were 
returning from worship, a troop of cavalry, 



OS MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

known and dreaded for its atrocities in other 
places, dashed into the town and took post 
in the church-yard. It was under the com- 
mand of an officer of fierce and threatening 
aspect, named M. de la Brique. 

Scarcely had the trembling Migaults 
reached their habitation, when a quarter- 
master rode up, and, without alighting, de- 
manded, in an imperious tone, whether they 
intended to turn Catholics. They were well 
aware that their only means to secure them- 
selves from the oppressions of the soldiery 
was to answer in the affirmative; but, 
strengthened to withstand the temptation 
under which so many sunk, they joined in 
solemnly assuring him that nothing could 
induce them to change their religion. On 
receiving this answer, he left them, and they 
sought preparation for the grievous trial 
they saw about to befall them, in prayer. 
The opportunity was brief: De la Brique 
himself broke in upon their devotions, and 
sternly demanded what sum of money they 
would give him daily : the more they would 
give, the fewer soldiers would be quartered 



STOBY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 89 

upon them. Alas ! poor Migault had nothing. 
Soon two of the hard-hearted cavalrymen, 
with their horses, made their appearance. 
The insolent fellows gave orders for a meal 
which would have been sufficient for twenty 
persons. While the food was preparing, two 
more arrived, and, having placed their horses 
in the stable, joined their comrades in the 
house. These were quickly followed by a 
fifth. The presence of five rapacious and 
insolent soldiers might have been thought 
enough for a single family to endure; but 
scarcely were these all arrived, when they 
were followed by four others, who, under 
pretext that the hay they had found in the 
stable was not of the best quality, began to 
use the most abusive language to their host, 
and to give utterance to the grossest impre- 
cations and the most impious blasphemies. 

All the company then began to demand, 
with loud threats, a supply of different arti- 
cles, which it was impossible to obtain in that 
little town. Migault represented to them 
that the only means of procuring these things 
was by sending to Niort, — a distance of 

8* 



90 MARTYRS OF FRAUCE. 

eight miles; and, in their eagerness to get 
what they asked for, they permitted him to 
go out and send some person on the errand. 

Bright among the gloomy scenes of this 
period shine the truly Christian conduct 
and the sweet charities of many a Roman 
Catholic neighbor, who, Samaritan like, suc- 
cored the suffering Huguenots in spite of the 
public hatred and the king's barbarous edicts 
against them. 

Such a neighbor, or two such, had Mi- 
gault in his distress. Two Catholic ladies 
occupied the house adjoining his own, and a 
concealed door opened from one to the other 
dwelling. 

To these ladies he addressed himself, beg- 
ging they would point out some person whom 
he might send on his errand to Niort. 
While he was still speaking with them, six 
soldiers rode up to the door and demanded 
a direction to Migault's house. The ladies 
pointed out the house, and then, returning 
to their poor friend, earnestly recommended 
him to fly, as the only means of safety. He 
could do no good by returning to his home, 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 91 

now in possession of fifteen merciless dra- 
goons, and if he would fly they promised to 
do all in their power for his poor wife, and 
even ventured to assure him that before the 
end of the day they would find means to with- 
draw her likewise from the power of their 
enemies. This they would undertake to do, 
whatever might be the consequence of their 
interference to themselves. 

Migault, offering up a prayer to God, suf- 
fered himself to be locked in a garden sur- 
rounded by high walls, in a back street, 
where he remained undisturbed for several 
hours. But the wife ? The fears which tor- 
tured him for her safety during those lonely 
hours proved too well founded. As soon as 
the brutish soldiers suspected the escape of 
the husband, they turned in their rage upon 
the wife. She was in feeble health ; but that 
brought no pity to their hearts. Striking 
her with violence, they dragged her to the 
dining-room, and compelled her to sit in the 
chimney-corner while the soldiers built up a 
great fire, feeding it with broken pieces of 
the furniture. The faithful Catholic friends 



92 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

were there; they sought in vain to procure 
some mitigation of her tortures, and even 
threw themselves at the feet of the officer, 
entreating for the poor woman's release. 
The fire was replenished until the heat be- 
came too great for her tormentors. They 
were obliged to relieve each other every few 
minutes. But she was as true and faithful 
as the three children in Nebuchadnezzar's 
fiery furnace; doubtless the same divine Per- 
son who strengthened those early witnesses 
for the truth was with the wife of the Hu- 
guenot. "This admirable woman/' says her 
husband, "knowing in whom she had be- 
lieved, did not for a single instant lose her 
tranquillity of soul. She resigned into the 
hands of her Saviour all which could dis- 
quiet or torment her." Her persecutors 
tried to induce her to renounce the Protest- 
ant faith; but she repulsed all their impor- 
tunities with firmness, until, overcome by the 
distressing effects of their cruelty, she fainted, 
and became insensible to their outrages. 

Happily, help came, once more from the 
side of the persecutors. In the absence of 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 93 

the principal clergyman, or cure, of the par- 
ish, who was a furious bigot and who hated 
the pious Migaults bitterly, a kind-hearted 
vicar, who had often testified his regard for 
these good Protestants, occupied his place. 
By his aid, these Catholic ladies succeeded 
in getting the poor woman through the secret 
door into their house, where they concealed 
her under a heap of linen in the garret. 
The soldiers were amused with the idea that 
she might be " converted." But, when they 
found she had escaped, their rage was ter- 
rible. They examined every corner of the 
house, and even proceeded to that of the 
charitable ladies. The very garret in which 
Madame Migault was hidden was submitted 
to their search; but here the protecting care 
of that gracious God in whom she trusted 
was especially manifested : the heap of linen 
was the only thing in the room they did not 
examine. After this vain attempt at dis- 
covery, the soldiers returned to Migault's 
house, to console themselves for their loss 
by drinking the wine and seizing on every 
thing they wished. The ladies hastened to 



94 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

inform Migault of the safety of his wife, and, 
directing him to take the most hidden road 
to the neighboring forest, promised to bring 
her at nightfall to meet him at a particular 
spot. 

The meeting was happily effected, — as the 
soldiers, instead of watching the roads, re- 
mained at the house, making merry over the 
wine. After trying adventures, the faithful 
couple reached Niort, and found refuge with 
a friend until the storm abated and the sol- 
diery were withdrawn. 

After this, we find Migault, with two of 
his sons, seeking employment in different 
places. At Eochelle they found many Pro- 
testant families preparing to forsake their 
persecuting country and to emigrate to 
Holland, England, Ireland, and America. 
Migault, too, meditated departure, but he 
could not tear himself from his dear children, 
who were too widely scattered over the coun- 
try to be brought into the plan. After a 
time he returned to Mougon, and actually 
reopened his school. Parents, children, and 
scholars were gathered once more under the 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 95 

lowly roof where so much domestic happi- 
ness had been enjoyed. But in the brief 
space of a fortnight the dreaded soldiery re- 
entered the district, and turned their steps 
once more toward Mougon. As on a pre- 
vious visit, so now, when the soldiers inflicted 
even greater barbarities on their victims 
than before, the Protestants stood firm. 

Few instances of apostasy occurred; and 
the forest was crowded a second time with 
fugitives, who abandoned their homes to their 
tormentors rather than renounce their faith. 
Migault made preparations to leave his be- 
loved home .once more, and went into the 
country to borrow a horse. As Madame 
Migault, with her three youngest children, 
waited for his return, she saw the soldiers 
enter at both their gates. Taken thus by 
surprise, she had only time to seize two of 
the children and escape through the private 
door into her Catholic neighbors' dwelling. 
The kind ladies who had befriended her in 
the former case were not wanting in care 
and attention now. They secreted her and 
her two children in a corn-loft. The soldiers, 



96 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

attended by the cure, searched for the Mi- 
gaults in their own dwelling, and in the 
house of their friends, without being able to 
discover them. For some hours Madame 
Migault remained concealed in the loft with 
her two children, ignorant of the fate of the 
rest of her family, and hearing plainly the 
cracking up of her furjiiture, and the crash- 
ing of windows, doors, closets, &c. in her 
house by the riotous soldiery. The dear 
little boy she had left in the house she could 
hear crying, as in great distress, and calling 
on her for help. By-and-by his cries ceased; 
and she afterward found that he had stolen 
away into the garden and hid himself in the 
evergreens, where he was found by a poor 
woman, who compassionately took him to 
her own home. Madame Migault's mother, 
who was living with her at the time, had 
also escaped to a neighbor's with four of the 
children. 

By the time night was well advanced, the 
scattered household was reunited. The in- 
fant, in the hands of the nurse, they were 
compelled to leave in a dying condition, 



STOEY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 97 

while they hurried their preparations for 
departure. Happy was the unconscious 
creature who so early was delivered from 
these hasty and heart-breaking pilgrimages. 
Did not the group of sorrowful fugitives 
half envy the dear babe, as they printed the 
last kiss on its lips and saw on its pale face 
the sure tokens of a summons to the quiet 
of the grave and the peace of heaven ? Little 
matter was it to the released spirit that the 
inhuman cur£ vainly sought to have the life- 
less body thrown to the dogs. But it is to 
the credit of the Catholic nurse that she and 
her husband secured it a decent Christian 
burial, in spite of the cure. 

The cavalcade soon started, intending to 
travel through the night. The mother was 
mounted on the borrowed horse, carrying 
the little Elizabeth in her arms; and Peter 
and Mary were in panniers, placed across 
the back of the animal; the two eldest walked 
with their father. At midnight, they reached 
a farm-house belonging to an acquaintance, 
where they rested a few minutes, and then 
continued their march until they reached 



98 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

the chateau of Grand Breuil. Here they 
soon had the satisfaction of seeing the entire 
surviving family, with the grandmother 
safely gathered; while the generous pro- 
prietor, Madame de la Bessiere, who appears 
to have been a true Christian woman, placed 
her keys in the hands of Migault, and put 
all her provisions and fuel at his disposal. 

But it did not suit the sturdy nature of 
Migault to live upon the generosity of others. 
As soon as the storm subsides, we see him 
again at his work, teaching a flourishing 
school at Mauze, a town in the vicinity of 
Niort. He was induced to take this step by 
the earnest importunities of two friends 
whose sons had been under Migault's care 
and w T ho were again to become his pupils. 
The plan succeeded beyond his most sanguine 
expectations. No sooner were they esta- 
blished there, than many of their former 
boarders, whom they had been obliged to 
dismiss, returned to them, and they had, 
besides, many applications from day-scholars. 
They had now full employment, and ample 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 99 

earnings for the support of their family, and 
enjoyed the friendship of the citizens. 

But, when a year or more had passed, it 
pleased God to visit Jean Migault with the 
heaviest affliction of all. His faithful, ex- 
emplary wife was removed from him by 
death, after a few days' illness. The be- 
reaved husband was scarcely the same man 
afterward. His troubles seemed to multiply 
from that sad event. He puts it on record 
that he never afterward enjoyed a day's 
peace in France. She seems to have de- 
served the beautiful title of his "Earthly 
Providence," which a Christian poet has 
. given to a faithful, capable wife. Jean says, 
" She was indeed my help-meet on all occa- 
sions, but especially while the fiercest per- 
secutions raged around us." 

Only twelve days after her death, a law 
was published forbidding all Protestant teach- 
ers to receive boarders at their homes. Mi- 
gault's scholars were placed in hotels, and he 
continued to conduct their studies. 

A few months more elapsed, and the in- 
habitants of Mauze heard the unwelcome 



100 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

tidings that troops were in full march for 
the province, destined to complete the ruin 
of those Protestant families who had not fled 
the country or turned Papists during the 
former persecution. Nearly every Protest- 
ant church throughout the kingdom was 
now either destroyed or closed; but the 
church of Mauze for a season escaped, being 
under the protection of a Protestant lady of 
rank, the Duchess of Lunenburg and Zell. 
Her excellent brother, M. d'Olbreuze, also 
resided in the neighborhood; and so long as 
her intercession with the king availed, the 
town of Mauz6 was a refuge to the persecuted 
believers of the entire province. On Satur- 
day evenings the town would be crowded to 
excess with Protestants from a distance, de- 
sirous of enjoying the privileges of worship 
on the following day, which were denied 
them at their own homes. 

But all the intercessions of the duchess 
could not keep the dragoons from Mauz6. 
Jean Migault, with his usual foresight, had 
dismissed his pupils and found hiding-places 
for his family, before these ruffians made 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 101 

their appearance. This was September 23, 
1685, one month before the king threw off 
the mask and dealt his final blow at the best 
citizens of his kingdom by revoking the 
Edict of Nantes. Migault was talking with 
a friend when the dragoons arrived. On 
hearing the alarm, the two descended into 
the ditch — then dry — which for purposes of 
defence had been dug around the town. 
Thence they took the road to Amilly, meet- 
ing on their way terrified women and help- 
less children, who, like themselves, were 
seeking safety in flight. Late in the evening 
they reached the chateau de Marsay, where 
they were received and sheltered for two 
days. Their next hiding-place was a pri- 
vate residence near St. Jean d'Angely, in 
another province, where three of his children 
had found a refuge. But in a few days it 
became necessary for father and children — 
one of the latter being a delicate little girl 
of seven years — again to seek safety in flight. 
The children were disposed of as securely as 
possible, and the disconsolate father became 
a lonely fugitive, hunted, with his brethren 



102 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

through France, like a partridge on the 
mountains. 

On the 23d of October took place the 
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. During 
the whole of this and the next month, Mi- 
gault wandered up and down the province, 
concealing himself during the day, and taking 
care never to remain more than forty-eight 
hours in a place, except in a single instance, 
when he enjoyed eight days' rest on the hos- 
pitable grounds of M. d'Olbreuze. So com- 
pletely were the paths of the Protestants 
beset with snares, that it seems wonderful 
any should have escaped. The cavalry were 
spread about everywhere; and the hospita- 
ble and tender-hearted among the Catholics, 
who were thought likely to receive the per- 
secuted, were daily subject to military visits. 
It had become very dangerous to give even 
temporary shelter to the fugitives: so that 
their nearest relatives often scarcely dared 
to do it. 

In December, it again became necessary 
for the afflicted father to change the hiding- 
place of two of his children. He was now 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 103 

in the utmost perplexity, not knowing where 
to hide his own head, or where to find a 
place for these two dear members of his fam- 
ily. Providence had designed that one of 
them should bear noble testimony for the 
truth, and thus beforehand make amends 
for the weakness of which her father soon 
after was guilty. 

Jane, a daughter aged eighteen years, 
after passing from one place of refuge to 
another, and enjoying for a week the pro- 
tection of a kind Roman Catholic friend, at 
length found an asylum with some relatives 
near Niort. Here she continued a fortnight, 
and would have remained longer, had not 
some person given information to the cap- 
tain of a troop of cavalry in the neighbor- 
hood that she was concealed in the house. 
Two dragoons were instantly despatched to 
search for her, which they did with great 
insolence, ransacking every place, destroying 
furniture, and treating the owners of the 
house with violence. The terrified girl fled 
at their approach, and hid herself in a neigh- 
boring wood during the night; but, when 



104 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

day dawned, she stole back to the court- 
yard and concealed herself in a heap of 
straw. In the morning the soldiers renewed 
their search, and the poor girl was discovered, 
and dragged with brutal harshness before 
the priest of the parish. But the noble 
girl firmly resisted all the threats and argu- 
ments with which they sought to turn her 
from her faith. A paper was placed before 
her to sign, and violence was added to threats 
to force her to comply; but in vain. He who 
makes his strength often appear the most 
manifest in the weakest of his creatures gave 
this young girl firmness and energy suited 
.to her trial. She remained immovable; and 
when the priest, who was resolved to make 
it appear that he had converted her, wrote 
under the pretended act that she did not 
sign it because she could not write, she 
boldly protested against the falsehood, and 
declared that she knew very well how to 
write, but refused to do so because she was 
firmly resolved never to renounce her creed 
or sign her name to an act of abjuration. 
We are glad to know that Jane, by some 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 105 

means, escaped from her persecutors, and 
was permitted soon after to join her father 
at the mansion of d'Olbreuze. Here Migault 
and his three children remained in safety 
for a time, passing for servants in the family. 
But now an order was issued forbidding all 
Protestants to have any but Roman Catholic 
servants; and Madame d'Olbreuze was reluc- 
tantly obliged to submit to this regulation. 
Poor Migault knew not where to fly. Seven 
of his children were thrown upon his hands, 
and he was again without a hiding-place. He 
acknowledges, with shame and self-reproach, 
the afflicting state of despondency into which 
he was thrown by these distressing circum- 
stances. Doubtless the presence of his faith- 
ful and pious wife would have strengthened 
him under these trials, and saved him from 
the act of sinful compliance into which he 
was drawn. 

He had gone to the great seaport of Ro- 
chelle, in the hope of securing for two of his 
sons a passage out of the country. Here he 
was seized and thrown into prison by the 
governor, but was afterward persuaded to 



106 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

sign the act of abjuration (renouncing his 
faith), which the more courageous Jane had 
rejected, and was set at liberty. This was 
a sad blot upon the character and life of an 
otherwise faithful confessor and sturdy Hu- 
guenot. We will let him tell the story in 
his own words, so far as we have it ; for, un- 
fortunately, just at this point four pages of 
the manuscript addressed to his children are 
missing. He says : — 

" Upon leaving the prison, I was conducted 
by an officer to the convent of Oratory, and 
there it was I basely put my hand to a paper 
which they presented for my signature. I 
did not read it ; but I could entertain no 
doubt of its purport. The fears for my own 
safety and apprehensions about my family 
that agitated my mind furnished plausible 
reasons why I might innocently sign; but 
no sooner did my guards disappear, and I 
regain my liberty, than I despised the so- 
phistry by which I had been betrayed, and 
contemplated my sin in all its blackness and 
deformity. 

" 1 can but faintly describe the shame and 



STOKY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 107 

sorrow I endured while at Mauz6. I endea- 
vored to pray, but could not give utterance 
to the feelings by which I was oppressed. 
It pleased God to hide the light of his coun- 
tenance, and I seemed abandoned to my own 
reflections, which had nigh driven me to de- 
spair. The congratulations of my friends, on 
my release from prison, increased the poi- 
gnancy of my remorse : their kind expressions 
were so many blows upon my heart; they 
produced the effect of the keenest reproaches ; 
and it appeared to me that no criminal was 
ever before tormented by so many accusers. 

"I was rescued, by the tender mercy of 
my God, from the frightful dangers into 
which my folly had precipitated me, and 
was consoled for all my sufferings, when I 
found that nine of you, my dear children, 
remained faithful to his word and appeared 
devoted to his service." 

Passing over a year of the history, we find 
that four of Migault's children had escaped 
from the country ; and the father now began 
to make preparation to follow with the re- 
mainder. This was a perilous undertaking. 



108 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

Sailors were forbidden, under severe penal- 
ties, to favor the escape of the Huguenots. 
The frontier and the coast were guarded by 
men who were rewarded in proportion to 
their captures ; the rural laborers were com- 
pelled to leave their work, and to watch 
night and day, with arms in their hands, the 
highways and ferries, and a part of the spoils 
of the Huguenots captured in their flight 
was promised them. The miserable captives 
were condemned to the galleys, and were 
driven in gangs, loaded with heavy chains 
like criminals, through the country, to their 
terrible doom. They were forced to make 
long days' marches, and when they fell, 
through fatigue, they were compelled by 
blows to rise. These were the dangers 
which Migault and thousands of his fellow- 
believers braved in the hope of escaping their 
tormentors. 

Eochelle, the famous Huguenot city on 
the Bay of Biscay, was chosen as the place 
of departure. 

Toward the close of 1687, after many 
disappointments, he found means to engage 



STOEY OF JEAN MIG-AULT. 109 

a passage for himself and his children in a 
vessel about to sail from this port. The 
perplexity he now had to encounter arose 
from the difficulty there was in conveying 
his family to Rochelle without observation. 
After hiring one carriage, in readiness for 
the nocturnal journey, and paying the driver 
a high price in advance, the man failed him, 
and never made his appearance. After much 
trouble, he succeeded in engaging another 
conveyance, at an enormous price; and in 
the middle of a bitterly cold December night 
he commenced his perilous journey with his 
children. After a night of dangers, they 
reached d'Ampere, and the next day found 
an asylum at the house of a relative, two 
miles from Rochelle. By a remarkable pro- 
vidence, this relative had removed to that 
place some time before, unknown to the fu- 
gitives, and was there almost as by design, 
to shelter them under his hospitable roof 
until the wind should prove favorable for 
the sailing of their vessel. This did not 
happen until the 16th of January, 1688. 
A long line of coast had been inspected by 
10 



110 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

another friend, and a certain portion, only 
three miles from Rochelle, had been found 
to be left unguarded by the watchful agents 
of the government. Here the captain of the 
vessel agreed to take on the party of emi- 
grants, who, with Migault and his family, 
numbered seventy-five persons. They had 
to come to the shore by night; and it is not 
to be wondered a>t that some of them lost 
their way and did not arrive until too late. 
The friend y^ho was managing the embark- 
ation had arranged that the different families 
should enter the boat in order, and that they 
should decide by casting lots which should 
go on the first trip and which should wait 
for the second. Every thing was proceed- 
ing favorably, when suddenly a false alarm 
was given: it was believed that the party 
had been discovered by the soldiers ; and the 
good man who was acting as leader, know- 
ing that death was the penalty for aiding in 
the escape of a Protestant, fled with a num- 
ber of the party from the shore, and was not 
afterward seen. The rest, learning that the 
alarm was false, remained. Jean Migault 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. Ill 

and his party had been waiting in a house 
near by, but in going down to the beach 
they lost their way ; and when they arrived 
the first boat was just putting off, crowded 
with some thirty-five persons. So they had 
to wait, tired, chilled with cold, and op- 
pressed with anxiety, until the boat should 
come back. But, when it .did return, it 
touched at a place one hundred and fifty 
yards distant from the spot where Migault 
and his party had waited so long and so 
wearily. The moment the cries of the sail- 
ors were heard, every person hastened to the 
spot whence the voices proceeded. The most 
active and least encumbered, especially those 
who had none but themselves to care for, 
gained the boat first; and when twenty-five 
had entered, the mariners pushed off, declar- 
ing they would take no more, as they were 
nearly sw^amped by their load the first time, 
but they would return a third time and take 
the remainder. 

It was often in such confused scenes that 
families were parted, wives separating from 
husbands, and parents from children, at times 



112 MABTYBS OF FRANCE. 

to meet no more. Those left behind fre- 
quently fell into the hands of their enemies, 
and perished by violence, or languished away 
their lives in prison or in galleys. Migault, 
however, kept his family together, but all 
hope of escaping at this time was gone ; day- 
light was coming, and two Eochelle guard- 
boats were seen hovering along the coast to 
cut off the emigrants in any further attempts 
they might make. 

"Our situation/' says Migault, "was now 
really awful. As we saw guards at sea, so 
we might reasonably expect to meet with 
guards on land. Great consternation seized 
the whole party. We knew the extreme 
severity of the governor of Eochelle, and 
many fancied themselves already in his 
power. My danger was, beyond all com- 
parison, most imminent. My companions 
were unmarried, and could easily disperse, 
or conceal themselves, according to circum- 
stances; but I had six children, whom I 
could not abandon, and three of them inca- 
pable of walking. I believe I may say that 
at no period of my life was my faith in more 



STOKY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 113 

active exercise. Many precious promises 
presented themselves to my mind, — some of 
which, though they then appeared familiar 
to my memory, had not before formed the 
subject of my contemplation. One passage 
wonderfully supported me: — 'The angel of 
the Lord encampeth round about them that 
fear him, and delivereth them.' I so medi- 
tated on these words that my fears were 
completely overcome." 

Nor was his confidence disappointed. The 
whole party withdrew safely to the house of 
the relative already mentioned, although 
they had to pass under the walls of Rochelle. 
Another opportunity was presented in April, 
when at length the unwearied endeavors of 
Migault to escape with his family were 
crowned with success. They embarked from 
the same spot where they had made the at- 
tempt in January, and, after a tempestuous 
passage of nineteen days, they reached Hol- 
land. Here, in the French church of Rot- 
terdam, Migault, and others who, like him ; 

had sinned in abjuring their faith, made 
10* 



114 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

public confession before the whole church. 
He afterward was settled in Amsterdam. 

Happy indeed was this fugitive, and happy 
all others who ; through manifold troubles, 
at length made good their escape to a land 
of freedom, though leaving country and 
home. Happy indeed, when their lot is con- 
trasted with that of the miserable fugitives 
who were arrested in their flight by the 
emissaries of the king. Loaded with fetters 
and chained in pairs with the vilest criminals, 
they were driven like slave-gangs through 
the country, and brought to Marseilles, 
where they were placed upon galleys and 
compelled to work most painfully at the 
oars. These oars were of such size that the 
person working them was obliged to rise at 
each stroke. Besides this severe labor, the 
galley-slaves were lodged and fed in the 
coarsest prison style, had scarcely any ac- 
commodations for sleep, and when sick they 
were sent to the galley-hospital, a dark, low 
apartment in the hold of the vessel, without 
beds, and overrun with vermin. If they 
were found too weak for the hard service, 



STORY OF JEAN MIGAULT. 115 

they were thrust into foul, damp dungeons, 
and kept there until they died. This was 
the fate of some of the best people of France, 
as of Le Fevre, the Parisian lawyer, and of 
Marolles, counsellor to the king in one of the 
provinces. The story of these men is one of 
extreme suffering and ignominy, borne with 
unmurmuring patience and gentleness to the 
end. Among the most faithful of all the 
witnesses to the truth which Christianity 
furnished in that age, are these galley-slaves, 
who triumphed in all their protracted and 
exhausting trials, filling their very jailers 
with wonder, like Paul and Silas with their 
midnight songs in the dungeons of Philippi. 



116 MAETYES OF FEANCE 



CHAPTER VI. 

SPLENDID ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE REFUGEES IN LITERA- 
TURE, ARTS, AND ARMS. 

But let us turn from these tales of wrong 
and outrage and suffering, which, however 
nobly borne, are still painful to dwell upon. 
Another and a far more attractive page in 
the history of the persecuted Protestants of 
France awaits our view. These trembling, 
despised fugitives, of whom the great empire 
of France, with" the splendid Louis XIV. at 
its head, was not worthy, no sooner landed 
and established themselves in free territory, 
than their true worth and excellence as men, 
as citizens, as workmen, as artists, as ge- 
niuses, and as heroes, shone out in the face 
of the world. Every country was filled with 
the useful and precious fruits of their in- 
dustry and skill ; every Church was adorned 
with their piety; every profession was hon- 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 117 

ored with their ability; every battle-field 
testified to their valor; and the distant and 
almost unknown shores of America, of Ice- 
land and Greenland, witnessed their boldness 
and enterprise. France despoiled herself 
madly and blindly of her richest jewels, and 
flung them abroad among the nations of the 
earth, who knew their rare, value, and who 
enriched themselves in receiving and cherish- 
in 2; them. 

The Papists thought to exterminate Pro- 
testantism : they only called forth its secret 
strength by the trials they put upon it, and 
sent abroad over the world the very spe- 
cimens which had been developed and en- 
nobled by the trial. Protestantism became a 
glory in all lands. It added new and honor- 
able chapters to the history of all civilized 
countries. The spiritual life and power 
which had been nursed by grace in the 
characters of these persecuted Huguenots 
became a vital element in almost all national 
progress. All movements toward freedom 
henceforth felt the impulse of Huguenot 
energy. The liberties of the only really 



118 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

free nations in the world — Great Britain and 
the United States of America — were achieved 
by the help of the banished Huguenots of 
France and their descendants. France, that 
banished them, still dreams of liberty, and 
sees it in visions, and sometimes tastes it, 
as Tantalus, but always miserably fails to 
attain it ; England and America are still the 
homes of the free and the refuges of the op- 
pressed. In the wonderful and glorious his- 
tory of the banished Huguenots, that saying 
of our Lord was fulfilled, " Except a corn 
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth 
much fruit." 

It is worthy of notice, that, in the order- 
ing of Providence, these martyr-refugees 
were scattered abroad among all civilized 
nations. No one country formed their place 
of refuge, or received the great body of the 
fugitives. No colony in the New World was 
built up to greatness under the control of 
some conspicuous member of the Huguenot 
body, gathering around him and carrying 
as by one impulse the multitude of his fellow- 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 119 

believers to the shores of a new France, 
which should have become more glorious 
and more powerful than the first. The great 
Admiral Coligny, in the preceding century, 
actually attempted to found such a colony in 
Florida and the Carolinas, but failed; and 
no one arose even to renew the attempt, in 
the sad era of which we are -treating. What 
a material was ready for such an under- 
taking ! All the elements of a society nu- 
merous, energetic, and full of hope for the 
future, — generals, soldiers, sailors, preachers, 
scholars, manufacturers, mechanics, mer- 
chants, laborers, and the capital requisite 
for their first establishment in the new 
country ! 

On the contrary, these persecuted people 
clung to France until the last moment, when 
they were compelled to escape by the nearest 
route and in the most secret manner, and 
when all attempts to aid them were made 
punishable with death : all they could think 
of then was how most speedily to get beyond 
the boundaries and away from the coast of 
their country. Each one embraced safety 



120 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

and accepted a home wherever he first found 
them. Thus, Switzerland, Holland, Eng- 
land, Prussia and other German states, Den- 
mark, Sweden, and even Russia, Iceland, 
and America, received bodies of refugees, 
more or less numerous, into their borders. 

In some of these countries, particularly 
Prussia, England, and Hesse-Cassel, the 
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an- 
swered by state papers condemning that 
cruel act, and inviting the exiles, in the most 
cordial manner, to those hospitable countries. 
Immense sums of money were raised in these 
countries — in England, a million of dollars 
in James II. 's reign — to aid the impoverished 
fugitives; lands were presented to the 
farmers; duties on the goods they brought 
with them, and taxes on their property, 
were abolished, or suspended for a number 
of years. The privileges of citizens, and 
even more, were granted to them. The 
Elector of Brandenburg (Prussia) espe- 
cially encouraged these settlements in his 
kingdom. He placed the French military 
officers in positions of higher rank in his own 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 121 

army than that which they had occupied in 
France, and put their distinguished men in 
the highest offices of honor and trust about 
his person. The cities of Holland, Amster- 
dam, Rotterdam, and others, treated them 
with the most marked favor, received the 
manufacturers into their own corporations, 
and loaned them money to commence opera- 
tions. 

The influence exerted by these refugees, 
thus warmly received, cherished, and hon- 
ored in various lands, was one of the great 
facts of the times. It changed the face of 
Europe. We need only mention the name 
and work of Calvin in Geneva to show that 
we speak but the sober truth. Calvin was 
indeed a refugee of much earlier times than 
those we have been describing. It was in 
November, 1533, that by the aid of friends, 
who twisted the bedclothes into a rope, Cal- 
vin escaped from the window of his college- 
apartments in Paris, while the persecutors 
were at the doors, like Paul let down from 
the walls of Damascus in a basket. The 
Church and republic of Geneva, and the 



122 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

principles of republicanism and of religious 
liberty all over the world, owe more than 
can be told to the lofty soul, the great abili- 
ties, and the pure doctrine of this single 
refugee from persecuting France. 

And in whatever branch of business or 
of labour, in whatever profession, whether 
of peace or of war, we find these refugees, 
they almost invariably take a leading posi- 
tion, and leave impressions for good that re- 
main for generations, and even yet appear 
in the life, the thinking, the pursuits, and 
the social order of men. They turned the 
current of speech in Europe to the French 
language, and largely aided in the move- 
ment which for a time put French in place 
of the native tongues of Holland and Ger- 
many, and which even yet maintains it as 
the polite language of Europe. They changed 
entirely the channels of trade and the course 
of exchange. When the news of the Revo- 
cation of the Edict of Nantes was received 
at Amsterdam, the consternation on 'Change 
was so great that no one would lend money 
to a house which dealt with French mer- 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 123 

chants. Those French merchants, with 
multitudes of tradesmen and artisans, were 
soon in Amsterdam and other Protestant 
cities, and France ceased to be the great 
mart for European traders. Holland, Ger- 
many, England, and Switzerland, under Hu- 
guenot industry, were rescued from commer- 
cial dependence on France, and became pro- 
ducers, instead of mere consumers, of all 
kinds of valuable manufactures. Berlin, 
Magdeburg, and Frankfort became commer- 
cial places. The Elbe and the Oder were 
covered with ships. All the great roads 
were thronged with carriages importing for- 
eign merchandise and exporting the manu- 
factures of the country. Russia and Poland 
came to Berlin to purchase the woollens, the 
silks, the velvets, and the laces, of the refu- 
gees, which they formerly bought in France. 
In two years, Amsterdam, which had pre- 
viously been given up to maritime commerce, 
was peopled with manufacturers and skilful 
artisans from France. All the efforts of her 
authorities, with an expenditure of millions 
to effect this object, had previously been in 



124 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

vain. These refugees, according to the testi- 
mony of a citizen, " filled the city more and 
more with inhabitants, increased its public 
revenues, multiplied the arts and manufac- 
tures, made money circulate, caused com- 
merce to flourish more and more, fortified 
the Protestant religion, caused a greater 
abundance of every thing, and even went 
abroad to attract profit from every quarter, 
— Germany, the kingdoms of the North, 
Spain, the Baltic Sea, the West Indies and 
American islands, and even England. They, 
in a word, contributed to render Amsterdam 
one of the most famous cities in the world, 
and like the ancient city of Tyre, which the 
prophet named 'the perfection of beauty/ 
and of which he said that 'she trafficked 
with all islands, and all nations; that her 
paths were in the heart of the sea; that all 
the ships and sailors of the ocean came to 
her port; that she abounded in all kinds of 
merchandise, and that her merchants were 
princes.'" The manufactures established 
by the refugees, says another authority, in- 
creased the prosperity of Amsterdam with a 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 125 

rapidity that struck Europe with astonish- 
ment. 

Such a reputation did the various manu- 
factures of the refugees gain, that they 
thrust out of the market even superior arti- 
cles of French make. Manufacturers in 
other countries went so far as to send their 
goods to Holland, bring them back again, 
and then offer them for sale as products 
of the industry of the French refugees in 
that country. Even French manufacturers 
sought to imitate the work of their exiled 
countrymen, in order to procure purchasers 
for their wares. 

Thus, a new life was given to the sluggish 
people of Europe, enfeebled with long wars. 
The cheerful hum of Huguenot industry 
filled the air, and the surrounding popula- 
tions were instructed in new pursuits, and 
astonished with new visions of thrift, good 
taste, rectitude, an&prosperity. The Hugue- 
not farmers drained the marshes of Hesse- 
Cassel, turned sterile tracts into blooming 
orchards, taught the Danes the secret of 
the rotation of crops, introduced the culture 
11* 



126 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

of flax and hemp in the bleak soil of Iceland, 
and everywhere planted gardens, and added 
to the salt meat and fish and dry beans 
of the Prussian diet the almost unknown 
luxury of vegetables. They opened mines 
of coal and iron; they set up forges; they 
more than doubled the whale-fisheries of the 
Dutch. They built the first paper-mill in 
Prussia, and their mills in Holland after the 
Revocation furnished paper to German, 
French, and English publishers; they gave 
an extraordinary impulse to the book-busi- 
ness, which at that time was carried on by 
the Dutch, and they filled France with a 
religious and doctrinal literature which to 
some extent supplied the place of the living 
teachers driven away by persecuting hate, 
and which perhaps helped so wonderfully 
to preserve the Protestant leaven in that 
country. To-day, in spite of St. Bartholo- 
mew, in spite of dragoonings, and in spite 
of the Revocation and the exile of half a 
million of Protestants from France, there 
are just about as many of this faith, in pro- 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 127 

portion to the population, as there were in 
1685. 

The great skill of these workmen and 
farmers, the taste and elegance displayed in 
the products of their toil, their honesty, their 
purity of character, their high repute for 
piety, their habits of order, and their devo- 
tion to their work, brought .about a result 
of greater importance to the working-man, 
perhaps, than any we have named. The 
mechanic arts and industrial pursuits grew 
in public esteem: seen in such ennobling 
associations, people could not any longer de- 
spise them as they used to do; and thus, 
through Huguenot influence, the condition 
of the middle and working; classes was ele- 
vated, and that great movement which is 
ever going on under the influence of a pure 
gospel, to dignify honest toil and to bless 
the working-man, was greatly promoted by 
these true confessors. Palissy, the Hu- 
guenot potter, a century earlier, felt that in 
pursuing his calling to the best of his abili- 
ties he was acting in accordance with the 
divine will, and expected and received God's 



128 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

blessing as a working-man. He honored 
and adorned his calling in a remarkable 
degree: the potter's art is a nobler one since 
his day. And the high-toned Huguenot 
workmen of a later day kept up and spread 
abroad similar views about this whole class 
of man's activities. God will not suffer this 
course of opinion on the subject of labor to 
be interfered with. All who seek to degrade 
labor and to enslave the working-man are at 
some period most terribly rebuked and pun- 
ished. 

But it was not only as working-men, ar- 
tisans, and merchants, that the refugees 
adorned their callings and enriched the 
countries that gave them a home. Many of 
them were famous as scholars, as preachers, 
as inventors, and as warriors ; and their act- 
ivity in these different professions won for 
them great and honorable names. The pens 
of their literary men were vigorously and 
successfully employed. Whether the news- 
paper-press of Holland owes its existence to 
the refugees or not, is uncertain; but the 
journals which they edited, and in which 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 129 

their sufferings were modestly and calmly 
told, had an immense circulation through 
Europe. The more literary class of journals 
were founded by these people, who conducted 
them with the utmost brilliancy. 

Nor are we surprised to learn that it was 
a refugee pastor — David Martin — who gave 
the French Protestants a translation of the 
Bible into their own tongue, — a work of such 
merit that it was universally adopted by the 
French churches of Holland, Switzerland, 
and England, and continues to be published 
to this day by the London Bible Society. 
The pastors of the French churches who 
withdrew to Holland were among the most 
famous preachers that ever adorned the 
Christian pulpit. With these preachers came 
a number of literary men in a body to Hol- 
land, where they not only found repose and 
liberty and enjoyed the respect of the Dutch, 
but where they put forth the most brilliant 
efforts of the tongue and pen, making Hol- 
land a literary centre of French Protest- 
antism, and communicating to letters and 
science a salutary influence which that conn- 



130 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

try feels to this day. The Huguenot 
preachers of Holland drew around them the 
educated people of that country, as well as 
their own flocks, by the extraordinary elo- 
quence of their discourses. The most dis- 
tinguished of them all was James Saurin, 
the preacher of the Hague. The flower of 
the Dutch people of that city, and the states- 
men who held in their hands the destinies 
of Europe, hastened to hear him, and to 
testify to the power and beauty of his dis- 
courses, and the peculiar and solemn strains 
of appeal with which he was accustomed to 
close them. "Is this," exclaimed oue, on 
hearing him for the first time, "a man or 
an angel who is speaking to us?" 

In Prussia and in England the most dis- 
tinguished preacher and writer among the 
refugees was Abbadie. His treatise on the 
" Truth of the Christian Religion," written 
in the former country, was received with 
equal favor by Protestants and Romanists. 
It was declared by disinterested persons to 
be "the only book worthy to be read in the 
world." After removing to England, he 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 131 

wrote the "Art to Know Yourself/' which 
was praised as the very perfection of his re- 
ligious treatises. As other Huguenots took 
up the sword for William, Prince of Orange, 
Abbadie volunteered his gifted pen in de- 
fence of the Eevolution of 1688, which de- 
throned James and placed William and Mary 
on the British throne. 

In other professions and departments of 
learning we find the refugees giving like 
proof of superiority and exerting a similar 
commanding influence. The Huguenot law- 
yers, who had always stood high in their 
profession and who had furnished many 
faithful martyrs in their own country, car- 
ried with them into exile the wholesome 
principles of the old Roman law with which 
'the French code is imbued, and introduced 
them into German practice. The Huguenot 
physicians carried the improved practice of 
the French schools abroad; and it is to these 
fugitives that England principally owes the 
perfection of its surgical implements. The 
"Academy of Science and Letters of Berlin," 
whose first president was the great Leibnitz, 



132 MABTYRS OF FRANCE. 

founded soon after the Revocation,' had 
among its most celebrated members not a 
few of the refugees. Several leading literary 
establishments in Prussia were founded by 
the government expressly for the refugees, 
and committed to their control : so that the 
education of the nobles and higher classes 
in that country was in their hands. How 
remarkably was Providence working to 
thwart the cruel designs of their enemies 
and to turn them into instruments of the 
prosperity and elevation of his people! 

It was a persecuted Huguenot physician, 
Papin by name, who anticipated the greatest 
of modern discoveries, — the steam-engine. 
He had already attracted the attention of 
men of science by his writings, and was 
called to London in 1681 and made a mem- 
ber of the Royal Society. When, four years 
afterward, the Edict of Nantes was revoked, 
he no longer regarded France as his home, 
but devoted himself to natural science with 
such success that in fourteen years the 
Academy of Paris made him a corresponding 
member, and a professorship of mathematics 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 133 

in Marburg, a city of Hesse-Cassel, was of- 
fered to Mm, which he accepted. 

The historian Weiss says, "His researches 
on the use of steam, and that which was 
called his 'pretence' to navigate a vessel 
without either sails or oars, go back to the 
first years of his exile. It was then, accord- 
ing to all appearance, in England, that the 
ingenious proscribed Huguenot conceived 
the first idea of the steam-vessel with which 
he afterward tried to navigate on the Fulda 
River [in Hesse-Cassel]. The experiment 
was but partially successful. The engine 
was clumsy, and needed improvements in its 
details. But the honor of giving the neces- 
sary impulse to his successors, and of open- 
ing a new and fruitful career for science, was 
no less his own. He was the first, in fact, 
who caused a piston to move in the chamber 
of a pump, who showed it possible to apply 
steam to the purposes of navigation; and, to 
conclude, it was he who, foreseeing the dan- 
ger of explosion, invented the safety-valve 
which is still in use at the present day. It 
was very little, then, which hindered the 
12 



134 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

world being endowed with the wonders of 
steam-navigation a hundred years earlier 
than it was." 

But perhaps the most splendid chapter in 
the history of the refugees is that which 
records their exploits on the field of battle, 
when contending in arms for the great prin- 
ciples of truth and righteousness to which 
they were so deeply attached. They volun- 
teered in great numbers in the armies of 
their adopted countries; and, as each one 
knew and prized above life itself the object 
for which many of the conflicts of those times 
were waged, every soldier behaved himself 
like a hero in the fight. No better material 
for the stern work of war could be found 
than the valiant and zealous refugees. 

The most illustrious of the superior officers 
who withdrew from France for conscience' 
sake at this time was the Marshal de 
Schomberg. So highly was this faithful 
soldier esteemed in Prussia, that, to detain 
him in the service of the government, he 
was made Governor-General, Minister of 
State, Member of the Privy Council, — in 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 135 

which he sat among the princes of the blood 
royal, — and Generalissimo of the entire army. 
But he felt called to sustain the great Pro- 
testant undertaking of William, Prince of 
Orange, against James II. of England, and 
could not be retained on the continent. 
Many brave men, including Schomberg's 
oldest son, remained and fought in the ser- 
vice of Frederick William and his son Frede- 
rick I. The war was, in fact, little else than 
the opposition of the Protestant Powers of 
Europe to the aggressions of Louis XIV., 
the persecutor of the Huguenots and the 
enemy of Protestantism. Hence the refu- 
gees could enter upon it with their whole 
hearts. The army of Frederick was one of 
the three raised by the Protestant allies to 
drive Louis back from his advanced positions 
on the Rhine. It was composed mainly of 
refugees, who proved their valor in the first 
campaign in the year 1689. At the combat 
of Neuss, just beyond the Rhine, the corps 
of refugees called the Grand Carabineers 
launched themselves on the forces of their 
papist fellow-countrymen like a thunderbolt, 



136 MABTYBS OF FBANCE. 

and drove them from the field, gaining a 
victory that secured Prussia from the insults 
of Louis XIV. At the siege of Bonn, in the 
same campaign, the refugees, at their own 
request, led the storming-party, and carried 
all the outworks by the irresistible fury of 
the charge. The next day the place was 
surrendered. In the next campaign the 
Prussians were led by the son of Marshal 
Schomberg with decided success. In the 
campaign carried on during the same war 
in Italy, the refugees sent by Frederick bore 
a most conspicuous part. They even crossed 
the frontiers of France, and captured the 
town of Embrun, in one of the southwestern 
departments. Marching in the van, they 
spread terror through the country, and gave 
opportunity to many Protestants yet remain- 
ing to escape from the tyranny of their 
persecutors, which they were not slow to 
embrace. We are reminded of scenes tran- 
spiring in our own country as we write. 
The overwhelming zeal and desperateness 
with which refugees from rebel tyranny will 
fight in the sight of the homes from which 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 137 

they have been driven, has been shown, in 
the conflicts upon the borders of East Ten- 
nessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. The 
feelings of revenge displayed by the Hugue- 
nots in ravaging Dauphin e are not to be com- 
mended, and, we believe, are not exhibited 
by the loyal regiments of our army in their 
advances upon those sections 'of reconquered 
territory which we have just named. 

The old hero De Schomberg, then seventy 
years of age, was gladly received by William, 
Prince of Orange, and appointed second in 
command in his great expedition to England. 
Already the Huguenot chief had visited the 
coasts of that country, to reconnoitre for a 
favorable landing-point, and had even en- 
tered into understandings with the leaders 
of the English aristocracy favorable to Wil- 
liam. With Schomberg came a great body 
of illustrious Huguenot officers, seven hun- 
dred and thirty-six in number, and three 
regiments of foot and a squadron of horse 
composed entirely of refugees. Thus the 
Huguenot element in an army only fifteen 
thousand strong was very considerable. 
12* 



138 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

Weiss calls it "the nucleus" of William's 
troops; Macaulay says nothing about it. 
It was by the wise advice of Schomberg that 
William abandoned his original plan of sail- 
ing directly up the Thames to London, and 
chose more modestly to land at Torbay, thus 
avoiding as far as possible the attitude of a 
foreign conqueror. Only some insignificant 
skirmishes interfered with the progress of 
the expedition from Devonshire to London. 
The nobles and people of England declared 
for William. James fled in disgrace; and 
the revolution which placed a great Protest- 
ant prince on the throne of England, and 
which settled the religious character of 
Great Britain, was quietly completed in the 
course of six weeks. 

When James afterward attempted, with 
the help of Louis XIV., to make head against 
William in Ireland, and when Dublin had 
actually received the former as king and 
Protestant Londonderry alone acknowledged 
the authority of William, Schomberg, with 
the refugees and other troops, was sent to 
oppose the movement. "Your majesty may 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 139 

have heard," wrote the veteran, " from others 
that the three French regiments of foot and 
one of horse do better service [in another 
place he says more than double the service] 
than any others." 

Before the decisive battle of the Boyne 
was fought, William had joined his brave 
lieutenant. The hostile armies were sepa- 
rated by that river. At the sight of the 
enemy, the refugees could contain themselves 
no longer. The De Schombergs, father and 
son, crossed the Boyne with the flower of 
the Huguenot army, forced back the French 
and Irish squadrons placed to dispute the 
passage, and formed in line of battle on the 
farther side. 

On beholding this splendid attack, says 
the historian, William passed the river, and 
the action became general. " Come, friends," 
cried Schomberg; " remember your courage 
and your griefs : your persecutors are before 
you." Animated by these words, they 
charged the French regiments opposed to 
them so impetuously that they broke on the 
moment. But in the pursuit, Schomberg, 



140 MARTYRS OF FRANCE. 

who fought at the head of his men ; was sur- 
rounded by Tyrconners life-guards, from 
whom he received two sabre-cuts and a car- 
bine-shot. The gallant old man fell, mor- 
tally wounded; but with his dying eyes he 
saw the soldiers of James dispersed in head- 
long flight. He was eighty-two years old 
when he fell in the arms of triumph. 

The battle of the Boyne was fought July 
1, 1690; and in one year, after two other 
victories won largely" by Huguenot valor, 
the authority of William and Mary was esta- 
blished in all parts of the empire. 

Among the truest and bravest defenders 
of American independence in the war of the 
Revolution were the descendants of the 
refugees who fled from France to various 
parts of our country. To all the other glo- 
ries of the race is thus to be added no small 
share of the honor of founding the Great 
Republic of modern times. 

Of many noted names in our country's 
history that had this origin, we may instance 
that of Laurens. Henry Laurens, the son of 
refugees who left France after the Revoca- 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 141 

tion, a prosperous merchant of Charleston, 
was in England when it became evident that 
there must be war with the colonies, and 
determined at once to return to his native 
land. " I am determined/' he said, " to stand 
or fall with my country." 

In 1779, he was sent as Minister Plenipo- 
tentiary to Holland, but the vessel was cap- 
tured on the way by the British, and he was 
carried as a state prisoner to the Tower of 
London. There he was rigidly confined in 
a narrow chamber; no one was allowed to 
visit him; books were denied him; he was 
not suffered to write letters, or to receive 
those written to him. At fifty-six years of 
age, and tortured by gout, he was subjected 
to all these trials for his country. He was 
offered a release if he would take the part 
of England in the conflict with the colonies. 
He rejected the offer with the liveliest indig- 
nation. It was insinuated to him that if he 
would in writing acknowledge his conduct in 
espousing the American cause to be wrong, 
he would be allowed to leave the Tower and 
be confined to London alone. "I will never 



142 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

subscribe my name/' he replied, "to my own 
infamy and to the dishonor of my family." 
He was told of the British victories and the 
confiscation of his property in the South ; 
but was left in ignorance of the success of the 
American arms in the North. "Nothing/' 
said he, "can move me." 

Two years of imprisonment failed to break 
his purpose. He was asked in 1781 to use 
his influence with his son, then on a most 
successful mission to the court of France in 
behalf of our cause, to induce him to leave 
the French capital. He w r as promised relief 
from his own sufferings if he complied. " My 
son," he answered, "is of an age to take 
counsel with himself and to follow the inspi- 
rations of his own will. If I were to write 
to him in the terms which are commanded 
me, my words would not produce the slight- 
est effect. He would conclude from them 
that the solitary confinement of this prison 
had weakened my intellect. I know that 
he is a man of honor. He loves me ten- 
derly, and would sacrifice his life to save 
mine; but he would not destroy his reputa- 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 143 

tion to purchase my deliverance ; and I ap- 
prove of his conduct." 

Laurens's sufferings excited general com- 
passion ; and his executioners, chagrined and 
ashamed, at length sought in some way to 
set him free without seeming to excuse his 
acts. But he refused to make concessions, 
and was set free, finally, without condition. 
Afterward he was appointed one of the four 
commissioners who signed, in 1782, the arti- 
cles of peace which assured our independence. 
John Jay, another of the commissioners, was 
also a Huguenot. In the treaty of the fol- 
lowing year, Laurens secured the extension 
of our western frontiers to the Mississippi 
River, with the opening of the navigation 
of that river to our citizens, and thus pre- 
pared the way for the annexation of Loui- 
siana to the republic. 

John Laurens, his son, whom we have 
just seen at the court of France, justified, by 
the ardor of his attachment to the American 
cause, all that his noble father asserted of 
him. At the age of twenty-two, he became 
one of General Washington's aid-de-camps, 



144 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

was wounded at Germantown, took a glo- 
rious part in the battle of Monmouth, and 
fought with great honor and success as lieu- 
tenant-colonel in the campaign of '78 of 
Rhode Island. When the war was trans- 
ferred to the South, he was with Moultrie, 
resisting the advance of the British on 
Charleston, when he was again wounded. 
Scarcely cured, he again took the field, and 
shut himself up, with a garrison of scarcely 
five thousand men, in Charleston. When 
many of the inhabitants wished to surrender 
to the British, young Laurens declared that 
he would pierce with his sword the first who 
should dare to pronounce the word " capitu- 
lation" contrary to the opinion of the com- 
mandant. Afterward we find him planning, 
with the help of French officers in Paris, the 
campaign of 1781, which led to the capture 
of Cornwallis at Yorktown. He returned 
home with money, men, and vessels of war to 
carry the plan into execution. Among the 
officers of the French soldiers who had come 
to our help were some of the most distin- 
guished names of the nobility of France. 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 145 

Was it not another of the remarkable pro- 
vidences by which God often signally sets at 
naught the schemes of the enemies of his 
truth, that this youthful John Laurens, the 
grandson of an obscure refugee, should lead 
to the succor of his native land the repre- 
sentatives of the highest nobility of the land 
of his ancestors? 

Laurens himself, now a colonel, led a 
storming-party against one of the advanced 
works of the British at Yorktown. March- 
ing his men with unloaded muskets, he 
successfully scaled the parapet, carried the 
redoubt, and himself took the commanding 
officer prisoner, in the space of a few minutes. 
Washington appointed this brave officer to 
draw up the terms of capitulation. This he 
did; but, without waiting for the spectacle 
of the surrender, he hastened South, where 
the British still held Charleston, and entered 
the army of General Greene. His ardent 
soul could not brook the presence of the 
British on a single spot of our territory. 

Here, in an engagement with the troops 
of the garrison, who had made a sally, after 

13 



146 MAETYES OF FEANCE. 

performing prodigies of valor in an advanced 
position, he fell, mortally wounded, and died 
on the field of battle, August 27, 1782, 
when scarcely twenty-seven years of age. 

It is by such noble deeds and such great 
triumphs in the cause of right and of justice 
that the history of the martyrs of France is 
completed. The ignominy and suffering of 
the early years of persecution are balanced 
by the distinguished favor shown them by 
many nations, and by the extraordinary ser- 
vices they were able to render in commerce, 
arts, and manufactures, in literature and 
statesmanship, in peace and in war. The 
martyrs of France are recognized as among 
the very flower of mankind, while their per- 
secutors have blotted their own names with 
ignominy and have damaged the character 
and hope of France, thus far, beyond repair. 

As a separate people, it is true, the refu- 
gees are rapidly ceasing to be known ; but the 
world is better, permanently, for their faith, 
their good confession, their heroic martyr- 
doms, their pure lives, their manly charac- 
ters, their thrifty habits, their esteem for 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE EXILES. 147 

honest labor, their extraordinary skill and 
good taste as workmen, their business enter- 
prise, their courteous manners, the perspi- 
cuity, eloquence, and power of their speech, 
the unreserved devotion of talents, property, 
and life to the cause of truth, of Protest- 
antism, and of human liberty throughout 
the world. 

Entire consecration to the service of the 
Master, such as shrinks from no sacrifice and 
no cross, will always produce lasting and 
precious results. The martyr spirit is a 
necessary element of personal religion ; and 
brief are the periods of the Christian's life, 
or of the worlds history, which do not call 
for the exercise of this element and put the 
professions of men to the proof. Those who 
love the truth well enough to die for it will, 
living or dying, do honor to their profes- 
sions and be a blesing to all generations of 
their fellow-men. 



, THE END; " 




N 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS 

PUBLISHED BY 

©je IWaierisit |«Mitatmn Committee, 

1334 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 

(Handsome?.!/ bound in muslin, icith gilt backs.) 



Nature's Wonders; 

Or, God's Care over all His Works. 226 pages, 18mo. 
Price 40 cents, illustrated. 

In this book the wonders of God's working in nature 
are shown in a series of interesting conversations. Il- 
lustrated by numerous wood-cuts. 

A Will and a Way : 

A Temperance Story, in verse. 95 pages, 25 cents, 
with four illustrations. 

The story of a heroic lad, by whose efforts a father 
was rescued from drunkenness. It is told with spirit, 
and will be read with pleasure and profit. 

The Lamp and Lantern ; 

Or, Light for the Tent and Traveller. By James 
Hamilton, D.D., of London. 202 pages, 35 cents. 

This book should be read by every Sunday-school 
teacher, and by them be commended to their older 
scholars. It will make the Bible a more honoured and 
interesting "and useful volume to its readers. 

Isabel ; 

Or, Influence for Good. "With Examples. 176 pages, 
35 cents, with illustrations. 

A series of lessons on good influences, pointed and 
enlivened by many narratives. 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS. 
Three Months under the Snow : 

The Journal of a Young Inhabitant of the Jura. 173 
pages, 35 cents, with two illustrations. 

A deeply-interesting Swiss narrative, showing the 
strength which God's grace can give to the hearts even 
of the young. 

Kenneth Forbes ; 

Or, Fourteen Ways of Studying the Bible. 298 pages, 
50 cents, with seven illustrations. 

A book leading to the Bible, and making it more 
clear to youth by its explanations. It is handsomely 
embellished with wood-cuts. 

Johnny M'Kay; 

Or, The Sovereign. 220 pages, 40 cents, with five illus- 
trations. 

The story of an honest boy's efforts, of temptation 
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Be Kind; 

102 pages, with illustrations, 25 cents, 

A capitally-told tale, showing the result of kind 
treatment to animals, children, and grown people. 

Margaret Craven; 

Or, Beauty of the Heart. 175 pages, 40 cents, five 
illustrations. 

A narrative showing the insufficiency of all worldly 
gifts in contrast with the beauty of godliness. It also 
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Cheerful Chapters; 

Adapted to Youth, and not Un suited to Age. 179 
pages, 40 cents, four illustrations. 

Admirably-written chapters, — happily teaching by 
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The Happy Resolve: 

A Tale from Real Life. 7S pages, 25 cents, with 
frontispiece. 

An English narrative, exhibiting the rescue of a 
young husband from drunkenness through the efforts 
of a wife. 

2 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS. 

The Children of the Bible. 

122 pages, 30 cents, with illustrations. 

Very well told histories of the children mentioned 
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Arnold Leslie; 

Or, The Young Skeptic. 257 pages, 45 cents, five 
illustrations. 

The history of a Scotch boy, who worked his way 
upward through many trials and temptations. Coming 
in contact with a specious infidel, who tries to corrupt 
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Irish Stories, 

For Thoughtful Headers. 2S5 pages, 50 cents, five 
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Five -narratives, purely Irish, and illustrating Irish 
life and modes of thought and feeling. 

Ellen and Sarah ; 

Or, The Samplers, and other Stories. 204 pages, 40 
cents, eight handsome illustrations. 

Three instructive narratives. Ellen and Sarah are 
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The Little Shoemaker ; 

Or, The Orphan's Victory. 232 pages, 45 cents, six 
illustrations. 

A true and well-told history of the trials and tempta- 
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temptation. 

Frank Harrison : 

The History of a Wayward Boy. 150 pages, 35 cents, 
with illustrations. 

A warning for boys in the history of one who, by 
slow degrees, got to the bottom of the ladder, and wa3 
nearly wrecked for time and eternity. 

Matty Gregg; 

Or, The Woman that did what she Cauld. 170 pages, 
35 cents, five illustrations. 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS. 



A charmingly-written narrative, showing that & 
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The Giant-Killer; 

Or, The Battle which all must Fight. 190 pages, 40 
cents, two illustrations. 

An allegory, as instructive as it is entertaining. 
The giants encountered are Giant Sloth, Giant Selfish- 
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Margaret Browning; 

Or, Trust in God. 147 pages, 35 cents, four illustra- 
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" Trust in God" is touchingly taught by the history 
of a poor family in the city of London. 

Nellie B-ussell; 

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pages, 30 cents, three illustrations. 

Little Nellie is cured of imaginary fears by learning 
to recognise the presence and care of her heavenly 
Father. 

"Voices from the Old Elm ; 

Or, Uncle Henry's Talk with the Little Folks. 277 
pages, 50 cents, four illustrations. 

The lessons of the Lord's Prayer are here brought 
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examples, in an attractive manner, in a series of con- 
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A Swarm of B's ; 

Or, Little Children's Duties explained in Six Charming 
Stories. 122 pages, 30 cents, six illustrations. 

These are "B's" well worthy of attention. Be 
obedient. Be. thankful. Be forgiving. Be truthful. 
Be contented. Be good-tempered. 

The Lost Key. 

178 pages, 35 cents, five illustrations. 

One of the delightful books of an admirable writer. 
It teaches that t( the fear of the Lord prolongeth days ; 
but the years of the wicked shall be shortened." 

4 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS. 

Poor Nelly ; 

Or, The G-olden Mushroom. An Old Lady's Story. 
244 pages, 45 cents, six illustrations. 

This is an authentic narrative, -written by the author 
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The Wilmot Family; 

Or, Children at Home. A Picture of Real Life. 314 
pages, 50 cents, five illustrations. 

The Christian training of a family is delineated in 
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children. 

Theobald. 

From the French of the Rev. Caesar Malan. 95 pages, 
25 cents, with frontispiece. 

A tale of the times of Huss, showing the power of 
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Prank Netherton ; 

Or, The Talisman. 234 pages, 45 cents, five illustra- 
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Exhibiting the power of God's word in the heart, to 
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Stories for Village Lads. 

176 pages, 35 cents, four illustrations. 

These are English scenes; "but the lessons are appli- 
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Old Humphrey's Friendly Appeals. 

232 pages, 45 cents. 

The name of "Old Humphrey" will be a sufficient 
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writings. Those who are not should, by all means, 
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thoughts, conveyed in a manner peculiarly happy and 
pleasing. 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS. 



The Young Hop-Pickers. 

An illustration of success in efforts to do good to the 
poor and ignorant. It is by the author of " The Lost 
Key," " Margaret Craven/' and other favorite books. 

Three illustrations, 30 cts. 

The Little Orange-Sellers. 

By the author of " The Young Hop-Pickers," "The 
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Rose Cottage ; 

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Paul and Harry Fane ; 

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Little Joe Ashton ; 

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The Shorter Catechism, 

With Scripture Proofs printed in full, prepared by 

Edwin Hall, D.D., has been bound uniform with the 

• Sunday-School Library Books. Price, 25 cts. It will 

be found useful by teachers. Bound in boards, 15 cts. 

Martyrs of the Mutiny. 

16mo, four illustrations, 50 cents. Animating and 
instructive narratives, showing that amid the horrors 
and atrocities of the Sepoy rebellion in Hindostan, 
Christianity manifested its power as clearly as in the 
days of the early martyrs. Hindoos were enabled by 
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o 



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Katie Seymour. 

Three illustrations. 35 cents. 

Showing by example how to make others happy. 

Frank Elston; 

Or, Patience in "Well-Doing. Four illustrations. 50 
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A story for lads who have none to depend upon but 
God and their own energies. 

Romanism ; 

Or, The Head and the Heart enlisted against Popery. 
With frontispiece. 35 cents. 

An English Prize Essay on the claims of Romanism ; 
designed for Sabbath-school scholars and teachers. 

Hannah Lee; 

Or, Rest for the Weary. Five illustrations. 45 cents. 
A narrative by the gifted author of "Matty Gregg," 
"Margaret Craven," &c. It teaches the patient en- 
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Abel Grey. 

The Story of a Singing Boy. Five illustrations. -15 
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By the author of "Hannah Lee," Ac. &q. Convey- 
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Daisy Downs. 

Four illustrations. 55 cents. 

A very entertaining story ; showing what the Sab- 
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The Thankful Widow. 

One illustration. 20 cents. 
A beautiful illustration of cheerfulness. 

Martyrs of Bohemia. 

40 cents. 

The Lives of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, the 
noble Bohemian martyrs. Their history should be as 
familiar to our youth as that of Luther. 

1 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS. 



Miriam Grey. 

With frontispiece. 20 cents. 

Scenes from a true history of thoughtfulness, good 
resolves, neglect, and sincere conversion. 

Life of Gideon. 

Three illustrations. 2.5 cents. 

The history of an ancient hero that is as interesting 
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Bechuanas. 

Three illustrations. SO cents. 

An account of the labors of the noble Moffat among 
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interest young and old. 

The Widow Davis 

And the Young Milliners. Three illustrations. 30 
cents. 

An illustration of the value and beauty of piety in 
the milliner's shop. 

Mackerel Will ; 

Or, The Little Fish-Pedlar. Three illustrations. 35 
cents. 

The power of religion is shown in the change 
wrought in a poor fisher-boy. 

Little May; 

Or, " Of what Use am I ?" 35 cents. Four Illustra- 
tions. 
. Showing that even a little girl may be useful. 

Money; 

Or, " The Ainsworths." One illustration. 45 cents. 
A prize book. 

Illustrating the proper use of money by an interest- 
ing narrative. /? Q O 



Uncle Jabez. 

Six illustrations. 45 cents. 
The teachings of adversity, 



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